What the documents look like
General trade export declaration work draws on a recurring document set: the export declaration form, the commercial invoice, the packing list and the contract. These records refresh per shipment, and product and marketing copy drafting must lift checkable statements from them. Source systems named in the public brief include the China International Trade Single Window, the customs code library, freight forwarder bills of lading and enterprise ERP. Compared with general trade import declaration, export declaration also affects the matching of export tax rebate vouchers, so a copy sentence whose quantity, amount or product name diverges from the declaration materials can surface as returned documents for inspection, declaration discrepancies or a blocked rebate. This page addresses one narrow step: whether a drafted sentence can be traced back to specific source wording in those materials. It does not cover company identity verification, report analysis or any other task.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node can select one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model, and it outputs a citation content array whose length may be zero. That output then feeds the answering step, where each answer statement is compared against the cited original text. Minimum relevance is a filter threshold that takes effect only under semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used; it does not perform permission or entity isolation. Hybrid retrieval fuses multiple result paths through RRF, which is a fusion process rather than a switch that can be turned on. The citation limit is controlled in tokens and is unrelated to any thinking budget. Document timeliness requires checking the current version against historical versions, and whether a citation is adopted still depends on review against the effective version. Retrieval is not authorization: forms collect values, while business verification, approval, database writes and external synchronization require their stated downstream implementation.
Hypothetical paper test case. Source wording available for comparison: "Item 12 of the export declaration form states the product name as 'stainless steel insulated cup', specification 500 ml, quantity 2,000 pieces, declaration date 10 March 2025." "Commercial invoice number INV-2025-0310 records the above 2,000 cups at a unit price of USD 4.20, trade term FOB Shanghai." "Contract HT-2025-008 provides for delivery in two batches, with the first batch of 1,200 pieces and a delivery date of 25 March 2025." The drafted sentence to be assessed is: "The full 2,000 cups in this shipment were delivered on 10 March 2025." The subject, object, status and effective scope of that sentence must be compared item by item against the source wording.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration or check item | Hypothetical starting point for this page | Reason for the choice and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Select the bases holding the above declaration form, invoice and contract | First check the vector model identifier of each base; only identical vector models may be associated together |
| Search mode | Hybrid retrieval | Product names and identifiers need both semantic recall and full-text recall coverage |
| Minimum relevance | Hypothetical starting point 0.35 for this exercise | Compare against 0.20 and 0.50 to observe whether source text relevant to the drafted sentence is filtered out |
| Citation limit | Hypothetical starting point 1,500 tokens for this exercise | Compare against 800 and 2,500 to observe whether the three source passages enter the citation intact |
| Question optimization | Enabled | Compare the source text retrieved for the same drafted sentence with and without it |
| Citation handoff | Pass the citation array to the answering step | Compare date, quantity and status in the answer against the cited original text, one by one |
Three common errors
- Treating "first batch of 1,200 pieces, delivery date 25 March 2025" as support for "the full 2,000 cups were delivered on 10 March". The input is the contract HT-2025-008 wording and the drafted sentence; the comparison objects are delivery quantity and delivery date. If the contract states only a first batch of 1,200 pieces with a 25 March delivery date, the drafted sentence's claims of full delivery and a 10 March delivery are unsupported.
- Treating minimum relevance as a permission filter. The input is the minimum relevance setting and the retrieval results; the comparison object is whether a returned record belongs to the selected knowledge bases. If a record comes from a selected base but scores below the threshold, this shows only that the threshold filtered it, not that permission excluded it.
- Treating an empty citation array as a workflow error. The input is an empty array output by the search node; the comparison object is whether the downstream answering step still runs. If the downstream step still executes and produces an answer without citations, the empty array does not constitute a node error.
How to verify the setup
- Use the declaration form, invoice and contract wording from the hypothetical test case as retrieval input, and compare whether the returned citations contain fields such as "2,000 pieces", "USD 4.20" and "first batch of 1,200 pieces". If the citations contain only some fields, record the missing fields and keep the status as pending verification.
- Use the drafted sentence "The full 2,000 cups in this shipment were delivered on 10 March 2025" as input, and compare whether the date and quantity in the answer match the cited original text. If the answer states full delivery on 10 March while the cited text supports only a first batch of 1,200 pieces delivered on 25 March, the sentence is judged unsupported.
- Use an empty array as the search node output, and compare whether the downstream answering step still executes. If the downstream step executes and produces an answer without citations, record that observation; if the downstream design stops on an empty array, record that design. Both need to be checked against the node documentation statement that the length may be zero.