What the documents look like
Retail checkout and loyalty work in this category moves through four document families: promotional price tags, membership points rules, daily checkout reports, and abnormal refund slips. The POS system, membership CRM, payment platform, and price tag system produce price, entitlement, cash reconciliation, and refund records respectively. Store checkout supervisors, CRM operations staff, and finance auditors cross-check the same materials, and the main consequences of error are price complaints, cash overages or shortages, and membership entitlement disputes. Materials update daily or per shift.
For citation tracing in procurement and supplier records, the practical requirement is that each citation can be returned to a specific document, a specific version, and a specific field. The retrieval step itself does not perform authorization decisions. The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model, and its citation output is an array whose length may be zero; when the array is empty, the output path still completes. Minimum relevance is a filter threshold that applies only under semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used, and it does not function as a permission or entity isolation control. Hybrid retrieval merges multiple result paths through RRF, reranking requires a ReRank model enabled by configuration, and image retrieval requires image input and matching model capability. Knowledge bases built on different vector models cannot be associated together; the check is to compare identifiers and exclude non-matching ones. Retrieval is a recall action, and authorization status, approval outcomes, and business effect must be implemented downstream.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The citation tracing step operates on the same four document families but is bounded by what the search node actually does. It recalls content and returns citations. It does not confirm that a refund was completed, that a price change took effect, or that a membership rule was approved.
A hypothetical drill sample is used below for paper checks only. Store materials for 1–7 March 2025 include a promotional price tag whose text reads: "Category A promotional price 9.9 yuan, valid 1 March 2025 to 7 March 2025." A same-period abnormal refund slip reads: "3 March refund slip R-0303, status is pending review, amount 45 yuan." A draft sentence under review reads: "3 March refund slip R-0303 completed the refund." A pending request reads: "Please cite the above price tag document to generate a promotional description." These are paper inputs. No retrieval was executed, and no business action occurred.
Several constraints follow from this sample. The price tag and refund slip must sit under the same vector model to be associated in one knowledge base search; cross-model association is not permitted and is checked by comparing model identifiers rather than by running a cross-model query to observe recall differences. Price tag numbers and refund slip numbers are suited to full-text or hybrid retrieval. Minimum relevance filters low-relevance fragments but does not separate stores, suppliers, or unauthorized records. A refund slip marked pending review does not establish that a refund was completed, and a draft sentence asserting completion is not supported by the source status field. The retrieval output still requires a downstream step to hand citations to an answering stage; whether that handoff exists is a separate implementation check.
Configuration and implementation checks
The table below ties configuration items and implementation checks to the drill sample. Values marked as hypothetical starting points are paper assumptions, not official defaults.
| Configuration item | Relevant value or check for this page | Relation to the drill sample |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Select one or more knowledge bases sharing the same vector model | Price tag and refund slip must be under the same vector model; cross-model association is excluded |
| Search mode | Semantic, full-text, or hybrid retrieval | Price tag number and refund slip number suit full-text or hybrid retrieval |
| Citation limit | Maximum tokens cited per search | Hypothetical starting point of 800 for this drill, chosen because the batch is short; compare against 400 to observe recall completeness |
| Minimum relevance | Value between 0 and 1, effective only under semantic retrieval or reranking | Filters low-relevance fragments; not a permission filter |
| Result reranking | Requires a ReRank model enabled by configuration | Applied for secondary ordering when candidates are numerous; not executed when disabled |
| Citation handoff | Check whether the citation array is passed to the answering stage | Compare each answer sentence against cited source text; an empty array follows the documented output path |
Three common errors
- Treating minimum relevance as a permission or entity filter. Input: price tag fragments from different stores within the same knowledge base. Comparison: the recalled set before and after the threshold is applied. Observable result: low-scoring fragments are filtered out while fragments from unrelated stores may still be recalled, showing that relevance does not perform isolation.
- Treating retrieval output as authorization or business completion. Input: the refund slip whose status field reads "pending review." Comparison: the draft sentence "completed the refund" against the source status field. Observable result: the two do not match, and a pending state does not constitute completion.
- Forcing association of knowledge bases built on different vector models. Input: two knowledge base identifiers under different vector models. Comparison: whether the identifiers match. Observable result: a mismatch excludes association, and no cross-model query is run to compare recall differences.
How to verify the setup
- Input the hypothetical price tag text and the draft request "Please cite the above price tag document to generate a promotional description." Compare whether the citation array contains that document text and its validity field. The condition is satisfied when the cited content matches the source and can be traced back to that document.
- Input the refund slip text "status is pending review" and the draft sentence "completed the refund." Compare the draft sentence against the source status field. The observable result is that the draft sentence is not supported by the source and should be recorded as pending verification.
- Input an explicit paper empty array []. Compare whether the downstream design continues along the empty-citation path. The condition is satisfied when the path does not break and no citation content is fabricated. All three checks are paper comparisons; no retrieval or business action was executed.