What the documents look like
Brand after-sales repair work is organized around warranty responsibility and physical repair sites, which separates it from marketplace-platform after-sales handling. The platform case turns on refunds and platform mediation; the brand case turns on whether a part falls inside warranty scope, which repair site holds the unit, and whether a replacement or return has been approved. Stock procurement and supplier records therefore draw on the after-sales system, store orders, repair-site feedback, and the national three-guarantee catalogue. The working documents are warranty cards, repair work orders, inspection reports, and exchange approvals.
Three steps consume the most time: deciding warranty scope, coordinating repair spare parts, and approving returns or exchanges. Citation tracing acts directly on spare-part purchasing justification and on verification of supplier records. Records update per order and daily. This page does not depend on batch synchronization or transaction-triggered mechanisms.
A repair centre's spare-parts purchasing group may hold a supplier record and a warranty card, and may draft a sentence that needs to be checked against those two sources. Tracing the citation means locating the exact source text, comparing the drafted sentence against it field by field, and recording what the source does and does not state.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node can be linked to one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model. Citation content is output as an array, and its length may be zero. Even when nothing is retrieved, the output path still runs. The retrieval output is then handed to the answering step, where each answer is checked line by line against the cited source text.
Semantic recall and relevance values do not perform permission or entity isolation. Retrieval itself is not authorization. The minimum relevance value takes effect only under semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used; it is a filter threshold and does not determine final ordering. RRF is the fusion step applied to mixed retrieval results, not a separate switch that can be turned on.
Assumed paper exercise sample: a brand after-sales centre's spare-parts purchasing group holds a supplier record whose text reads: "The Brake Pad Supply Cooperation Letter of Intent submitted by Supplier A in March 2025 states that the quotation is valid until 30 June 2025; the signature field is blank; no supply term or effective condition is recorded." A warranty card reads: "The vehicle was purchased in January 2024; brake pads are a wear part within warranty scope; the warranty period is twelve months." The sentence to be assessed reads: "Supplier A has signed the letter of intent, and the supply term covers the second half of 2025." The materials needed for this check are the two source texts above. The retrieval scope is limited to the supplier records base and the warranty card base already authorized for this after-sales centre.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Assumed starting value for this exercise | Reason and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Linked knowledge bases | Supplier records base, warranty card base | Both must share the same vector model; check identifiers one by one and exclude any that do not match; do not run cross-model retrieval comparisons |
| Search mode | Mixed retrieval | Supplier names and warranty clauses contain proper nouns; mixed retrieval uses semantic and full-text recall together |
| Result reranking | Enabled | Reorders candidates when there are many; requires a reranking model that is present and enabled under settings |
| Citation limit | Assumed starting value of 2000 tokens for this exercise | Chosen to cover both source texts; compare against the evidence volume the drafted sentence needs, then adjust |
| Minimum relevance | Assumed starting value of 0.3 for this exercise | Takes effect only under semantic retrieval or result reranking; compare against the relevance of recalled content, then adjust |
| Question optimization | Enabled | Completes references in follow-up turns; may be turned off when the question is already clear, to reduce latency |
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval hit as authorized execution. Input: the supplier record text above. Comparison object: the phrase "has signed" in the drafted sentence, against a blank signature field in the source. Observable result: the cited source contains no signature record.
- Treating quotation validity as the supply term. Input: "quotation is valid until 30 June 2025." Comparison object: "the supply term covers the second half of 2025" in the drafted sentence. These are different fields. Observable result: the source records no supply term.
- Treating an empty citation array as a workflow error. Input: the search node output
[]. Comparison object: the downstream answering step's design. The node documentation states the length may be zero and the path still runs. Observable result: whether the downstream step continues to process an empty citation.
How to verify the setup
- Input the supplier record text above together with the drafted sentence. Compare "signature field is blank" against "has signed." If the cited source contains no signature record, the drafted sentence is unsupported, and the evidence gap is retained.
- Input the warranty card text together with the supply-term wording in the drafted sentence. Compare "warranty period is twelve months" against "supply term covers the second half of the year." The subjects and fields differ. If the source has no supply-term field, the claim is unsupported.
- Input a paper record showing the search node output
[]. Compare whether the downstream answering step continues on an empty citation. If the downstream design accepts an empty array, the path runs. Do not claim that a fictional rule lookup necessarily returns[].
This page covers only brand after-sales repair services, stock procurement and supplier records, and citation tracing. In operational handover, the authorization state of materials, actions, and requests must be kept distinct: retrieval and forms are not authorization execution.