What the documents look like
Inbound receiving and putaway is the first physical-versus-record confirmation when goods enter the warehouse. The working materials are the purchase arrival note, the inbound acceptance note, the putaway task, and the discrepancy report, with data drawn from the WMS, ERP purchasing, supplier delivery notes, and barcode scanning. These materials determine whether stock records match physical stock. Citation tracing therefore has to tie every sentence of an answer back to a specific document, because a version difference between documents can decide whether a citation is still valid. Data updates per batch and per day, so a citation that was correct for one delivery may no longer describe the current record.
The category differs from in-warehouse picking and packing in that it confirms the first record of goods entering the warehouse. A receiving clerk, a WMS administrator, and the warehouse itself are the typical parties. Errors here produce stock mismatches, later picking errors, and supplier disputes.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that use the same vector model, and it outputs a citation array whose length may be zero. A zero-length array still passes through the output path. Retrieval does not carry authorization duties, and the minimum relevance value is a filter threshold, not a permission or entity isolation mechanism. Citation content is passed to the answering step, and the answer has to be checked line by line against the cited source text. Hybrid retrieval merges results through RRF; reranking requires a model and must be enabled by configuration; image retrieval requires image input and model capability. These paths do not all run on every request.
Hypothetical drill sample: a warehouse receiving clerk processes purchase arrival note CG-2025-0610 on 10 June 2025. The supplier delivery note states "Model A barcode scanner, 40 units, batch L2506." The inbound acceptance note records "38 units actually received, 2 units with damaged outer packaging, pending discrepancy handling." No putaway task has been generated. A draft sentence is under review: "The purchase arrival note, supplier delivery note, and inbound acceptance note confirm that all 40 units have been put away." The object of judgment is the arrival quantity and putaway status for the same batch and the same field. Comparing the three source documents against the draft sentence, the draft sentence conflicts with the accepted quantity on the acceptance note, and no putaway task exists, so the sentence is unsupported.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Hypothetical starting point for this trial | Reason and comparison object |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Only the inbound putaway library using the same vector model | Compared against a library identifier using a different vector model; non-matching identifiers are excluded and cross-model retrieval is not executed |
| Search mode | Hybrid retrieval | Compared against semantic retrieval alone; part-number questions need full-text recall as a supplement |
| Minimum relevance | Set by the implementer against the sample | Compared against semantic retrieval or rerank scores; this value does not perform permission filtering |
| Citation limit | Set in tokens | Compared against a fixed top-k count; avoids unstable results when chunk lengths differ |
| Question optimization | Decided by the multi-turn follow-up scenario | Compared against the disabled state; enabling it adds one model call |
| Result reranking | Enabled by configuration when a model is available | Compared against the disabled state; rerank scores can be used for filtering |
The citation limit uses tokens as its unit. Thinking budget belongs to model thinking configuration and cannot be repurposed as a citation token limit.
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval hit as authorization. The retrieval output is a citation array and does not indicate operational permission. A pending-review status does not demonstrate the absence of operational permission; the business action requires a separate system implementation.
- Treating an empty citation array as workflow termination. Citation length may be zero, and an empty array still passes through the output path. Use the paper input
[]to check how the downstream step is designed to receive it. - Associating knowledge bases that use different vector models. Cross-model association is not permitted. Check the identifier first, exclude non-matching ones, and record the actual observation without inferring missed recall or redundant results.
How to verify the setup
- Input the three source documents and the draft sentence from the hypothetical sample. Compare the arrival quantity field and the putaway status field. When the draft sentence conflicts with the accepted quantity on the acceptance note and no putaway task exists, the judgment is unsupported; it must not be recorded as a contradiction or a denial.
- Input the paper empty citation array
[]. Compare whether the downstream answering step still executes. The condition is satisfied when the output path passes through without error. Do not claim that a fabricated rule search necessarily returns an empty array. - Input two knowledge base identifiers that use different vector models. Compare whether the identifiers match. The condition is satisfied when non-matching identifiers are excluded and cross-model retrieval is not executed. Do not invent runtime results for a cross-model association that was never performed.