What the documents look like
General trade import declaration work centres on the import declaration form, commercial invoice, packing list, bill of lading and contract. Compared with export declaration, the emphasis falls on dutiable value, freight and insurance, and tax payment. Customs brokers and customs managers check these fields shipment by shipment. For the inventory procurement and supplier records task, the working material arrives from the International Trade Single Window, customs tariff schedules, forwarder arrival notices and foreign exchange payment documents, and it updates with each shipment. Together these materials determine which supplier, goods, amount and arrival status belong to one procurement, and retrieval must associate fragments from different sources with the same shipment.
Constraints at the retrieval step
The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that use the same vector model. Knowledge bases built on different vector models cannot be associated together; check the vector model identifier first, exclude those that do not match, and record what is actually observed. Reference content is output as an array and its length can be zero, so the output path still runs when nothing is found. Search mode, reference limit, minimum relevance and question optimisation follow their documented meanings: the reference limit is measured in tokens, minimum relevance takes effect only in semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used, and question optimisation performs coreference resolution and question expansion. Image retrieval requires corresponding image input and model capability, and reranking requires a model and must be enabled in settings. These optional paths do not all execute on every request. The same-vector-model requirement for associated knowledge bases does not extend to other external systems.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample: an importer's customs manager submits a paper handover request reading "Supplier A's procurement contract number CT-2024-018, goods are valves, commercial invoice amount USD 42,000, bill of lading shows estimated arrival 12 March; please confirm from existing materials whether this shipment has completed customs declaration." The draft sentence to be assessed is "This shipment has completed customs declaration and can be scheduled for warehousing." The sample is used only to check retrieval and recall and does not involve a real customer or legitimate identity number.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Hypothetical trial starting point | Reason and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | One inventory procurement records base | Check the vector model identifier for consistency before associating; exclude those that do not match |
| Search mode | Hybrid retrieval | Compare recalled content for the same question against semantic retrieval and full-text retrieval separately |
| Reference limit | Hypothetical starting point 2000 tokens | Test content completeness with materials of different lengths, then adjust |
| Minimum relevance | Hypothetical starting point 0.4 | Label relevant and irrelevant samples first, then compare filtering results |
| Question optimisation | Enabled | Compare the original question with the optimised question and check whether the subject has been altered incorrectly |
| Result reranking | Enabled per settings | When a model is available, compare candidate ordering before and after reranking |
The values in the table are hypothetical trial starting points for this exercise, not official defaults.
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval hit as authorisation. Returning reference content does not mean the handover request has been approved. In the sample, "please confirm from existing materials whether this shipment has completed customs declaration" is a request pending review; retrieving the contract and bill of lading only shows the materials exist, and the declaration completion status still requires separate verification.
- Forcing association of knowledge bases on different vector models. Cross-model association is not permitted; check the identifier first, exclude those that do not match, and record the actual observation. Do not infer missed recalls or redundancy from this.
- Treating a quotation validity period as a supply period. In the sample, the commercial invoice amount and the bill of lading arrival date are different fields. A contradiction exists only when the same field carries explicitly mutually exclusive values; an unstated field or evidence covering only a related stage is unsupported or pending verification.
How to verify the setup
- Enter the sample text "Supplier A's procurement contract number CT-2024-018, goods are valves, commercial invoice amount USD 42,000, bill of lading shows estimated arrival 12 March" and compare whether the returned reference content includes the contract number and the bill of lading arrival information; observe whether the reference array is non-empty and whether the fields correspond to the same shipment.
- Enter the draft sentence to be assessed, "This shipment has completed customs declaration and can be scheduled for warehousing," and compare whether the retrieved materials state the fact of declaration completion; observe whether a declaration completion record exists for the same subject, same period and same field. When it is not stated, record it as pending verification.
- Enter an explicit paper empty-result scenario and compare how the downstream design handles a reference content length of zero; observe whether the output path still runs. Do not claim that a fictional rule retrieval necessarily returns an empty array.