What the documents look like
This category covers single-use plastic bag and disposable-item reporting for supermarkets and convenience stores. The work sits with head-office compliance and administrative procurement rather than with membership marketing. The materials involved are the plastic bag procurement ledger, sales vouchers, the semi-annual report, and the self-discipline commitment. The procurement ledger records incoming batches, suppliers, quantities, and specifications. Sales vouchers record what stores actually sold. The semi-annual report consolidates usage and recovery information. These materials come from different systems and manual records, so the same batch of plastic bags can appear under inconsistent quantity scopes across the ledger, the vouchers, and the report. Citation tracing requires matching each cited item in a report back to a specific source document. The version and validity range of the source document determine whether a citation holds.
The semi-annual reporting cycle and daily POS updates mean the ledger and the vouchers move at different speeds. A quantity recorded in the ledger for a half-year window may not align with the same window in a POS extract. The compliance consequence of an unsupported citation is a rectification order, a fine between 10,000 and 100,000 yuan, or a regulatory interview. That consequence shapes the tracing step: each cited figure needs a named source, a period, and an object identity.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node selects one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model. It outputs a citation array whose length can be zero. A zero-length array does not mean the workflow has thrown an error or stopped. The minimum relevance value takes effect only under semantic retrieval or result reranking. It is a filtering threshold and does not perform permission or entity isolation. Hybrid retrieval merges multiple result paths through RRF. Reranking requires a rerank model and must be enabled according to settings. Image retrieval requires image input and model capability. The retrieval output must be handed to the answering step, where each answer is checked line by line against the cited source text. Version checks use the current document and a historical document to test the source, and whether a citation is adopted still depends on review of the valid version.
A hypothetical paper exercise: a chain supermarket head-office compliance role prepares first-half plastic bag procurement tracing materials in July 2025. The procurement ledger text reads: "From January to June 2025, 12,000 units of specification A plastic bags were purchased from Supplier A, purchase order number CG-2025-031." The sales voucher text reads: "From January to June 2025, 11,500 units of specification A plastic bags were sold via POS." The self-discipline commitment text reads: "This unit commits to report plastic bag usage and recovery information to the commerce authority every six months." The draft sentence to be assessed reads: "In the first half of 2025, 12,000 specification A plastic bags were purchased and 11,500 were sold, and recovery information was reported under the self-discipline commitment." The draft sentence states purchase, sale, and reporting as parallel facts, but the sample materials contain no receipt or acceptance record for the recovery report.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Hypothetical starting point for this exercise | Reason and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Linked knowledge bases | Include only knowledge bases containing the procurement ledger, sales vouchers, and semi-annual report | Check whether the vector model identifier is the same across bases; exclude any that differ and do not run cross-model retrieval |
| Search mode | Hybrid retrieval | The ledger contains exact identifiers such as CG-2025-031, which full-text retrieval can match, while semantic retrieval covers natural-language phrasings |
| Citation limit | Aim to cover the three source types: ledger, voucher, commitment | Check line by line whether the citation content contains source text from all three types; record a gap when coverage is missing |
| Minimum relevance | Set to 0.5 as the hypothetical starting point for this exercise | Chosen to observe how the number of citations changes after filtering, compared with the count when no threshold is set; not an official default |
| Result reranking | Enabled | When candidates are numerous, use the rerank score for ordering and compare with the ordering without reranking |
| Citation output | Accept the array, length may be zero | Use a paper input of [] to check downstream design; do not claim that a fictional rule makes retrieval always return [] |
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval hit as authorization to act. Retrieval returning the procurement ledger text does not mean the batch was approved or received into stock. Check the input as the retrieval output array, compare whether it contains an approval or receipt status field, and observe that it contains only source text with no status record; record the authorization gap.
- Treating a parallel statement in a draft sentence as a verified fact. The sample draft sentence says recovery information was reported under the self-discipline commitment, while the materials contain no receipt or acceptance record. Check the input as the draft sentence and the three source texts, compare whether "was reported" has a corresponding receipt field, and observe that it is not stated; mark it as pending verification.
- Forcing knowledge bases with different vector models to be linked together. Check the input as the vector model identifier of each knowledge base, compare whether the identifiers are the same, and observe that mismatched bases are excluded and the actual observation is recorded. Do not infer missed recall or redundant results from a joint linkage.
How to verify the setup
- Test with the hypothetical sample procurement ledger text, sales voucher text, and draft sentence. The input is these three text segments. Compare whether the purchase quantity of 12,000 units in the draft sentence matches the ledger text in the same subject, same period, and same field. If they match, the check passes; if not, record the difference. This is not claimed to have been tested.
- Test with the phrase "recovery information was reported under the self-discipline commitment" from the sample draft sentence. The input is that phrase and the self-discipline commitment text. Compare whether a recovery reporting receipt or acceptance record exists. If the materials do not state it, judge it as pending verification, not as a negation or conflict.
- Test empty-citation handling with a paper input of []. The input is an explicit empty array. Compare whether the downstream answering step runs through without error. If the chain runs through, record that the empty-result handling design holds. Do not claim that a fictional rule makes retrieval always return [].