What the documents look like
Inbound putaway is the first physical-and-ledger confirmation when goods enter a warehouse. The working data comes from the WMS, ERP purchasing records, supplier delivery notes and barcode scans. The documents handled day to day include the purchase arrival note, the inbound acceptance sheet, the putaway task and the discrepancy report. When product and marketing copy is drafted, the quantities, batch identifiers, status values and specification descriptions that appear in that copy need to trace back to the wording of these documents. Checking arrival quantities, printing barcodes and assigning storage locations are time-consuming steps, and copy that skips the fields those steps produce leaves later picking and supplier disputes without a traceable basis.
The brief records this category as roughly characterised rather than fully confirmed, so the descriptions here stay at the level the brief supports. The update rhythm is per batch and per day. That rhythm does not change the citation tracing work on this page, so it is not treated as a configuration input.
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 cited content as an array whose length may be zero. An empty array still lets the output path run through. Once retrieval results reach the answering step, the answer and the cited source text need to be compared item by item.
Two parameters carry documented conditions. The minimum relevance value is a filter threshold that takes effect only in semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used. It is not a permission filter and does not separate entities or business scopes. The citation limit controls, in tokens, the maximum amount of content cited per search; it is unrelated to any thinking budget. RRF is the fusion step that combines multiple retrieval paths in hybrid retrieval, not a switch that is turned on.
A relevance score is not a category, entity or permission filter. Retrieval does not grant authorization. When a draft sentence makes a claim about acceptance status, quantity or batch, the comparison must use the same subject, the same period and the same field.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample. Source text, an excerpt from a purchase arrival note: "Document number CG-2026-0417-A; supplier: a packaging materials business in East China; material: five-layer corrugated cartons; arrival quantity 1200 pieces; arrival date 17 April 2026; acceptance status is pending acceptance." Draft sentence under review: "This batch of 1200 cartons has passed acceptance and can be put away and sold immediately." Review scope: this document number, this material, this arrival date. Authorization boundary: only the material listed on this page is reviewed; other batches and suppliers are outside the exercise.
The draft sentence asserts a completed acceptance result. The source text records the acceptance status as pending. Pending is not approval, and an unsigned or unfinished acceptance is not a completed acceptance. The draft sentence is therefore unsupported by the cited source as written.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration or check item | Hypothetical starting point for this exercise | Comparison method and reason |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Select the inbound putaway reference library | Check the vector model identifier of each selected library; only libraries with the same vector model can be associated together |
| Citation limit | Set to 3000 tokens for this exercise | Compare against the length of the source passages this draft needs; this is a starting value chosen for the exercise, not an official default |
| Minimum relevance | Set to 0.5 for this exercise | Compare against the semantic or rerank score returned by retrieval; the threshold applies only in semantic retrieval or reranking |
| Question optimisation | Assume off | Compare against a single-turn, clearly worded question; keeps the exercise to one retrieval call |
| Reply format | Keep default | Compare against whether a downstream step needs to read a fixed structure |
| Citation hand-off | Check whether the search output is passed to the answering step | Compare the answer against the cited source text item by item; when the array is empty, check the downstream design |
The citation limit here is a token budget for cited content. It is not a thinking budget and does not control model reasoning.
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval score as a permission filter. Input a question that touches another supplier, compare the returned citations against the selected knowledge base scope, and observe whether records outside the authorized scope appear. A similarity setting does not exclude unrelated businesses or unauthorized records.
- Writing a pending acceptance as a passed acceptance. Input the purchase arrival note text above together with the draft sentence, compare the acceptance status field values, and observe whether the draft sentence matches the same field value in the source. Pending acceptance and passed acceptance are mutually exclusive values in the same field.
- Treating an empty citation array as an error. Input a paper value of an empty array, compare whether the downstream node still runs through, and observe whether it is misread as a terminated flow. The documented behaviour is that an empty array still lets the output path run through.
How to verify the setup
- Input the purchase arrival note text above together with the draft sentence, compare the acceptance status field, and expect the comparison to flag the draft sentence as unsupported by the source. The source records pending acceptance; the draft asserts passed acceptance.
- Input an arrival note for the same material on a different date, compare the arrival date and quantity fields, and expect the two batches to be kept distinct rather than merged into one citation. Same material with a different date and quantity is a different batch.
- Input a paper value of an empty array, compare the downstream answering step's hand-off design, and expect the path to run through and the empty citation to be recorded. This exercise does not claim that retrieval will necessarily return an empty array.
For all three checks, the material must sit inside the accessible target retrieval scope or be supplied as an explicit manual input. Where a needed field is not present in the source, the result stays unknown or unsupported rather than being recorded as a conflict.