What the documents look like
Channel diversion review concerns regional and price order. The working materials named in the generic brief are diversion complaint forms, anti-counterfeit code records, penalty notices and investigation photographs. These materials sit across anti-counterfeit code systems, e-commerce platform price pages, distributor shipment records and market inspection records, with weekly or irregular updates. This page addresses one task inside that category: inventory procurement and supplier materials, examined through the citation-source-and-tracing feature.
For this task the question is whether procurement batches, supplier entities, shipment destinations and authorization scope can be matched against those materials. Records for the same batch frequently differ between stages, so citation tracing attaches each conclusion to specific source text for human comparison. The materials are not uniform: a complaint form, a code activation record and a photograph page each carry different fields, and a field present in one is not automatically present in another.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model, and it outputs cited content as an array whose length may be zero. A zero-length array means the output path still runs; it does not mean the workflow terminated with an error. The cited content is then passed to the answering step, where each answer sentence is compared against the cited source text.
Semantic retrieval and the minimum relevance score are similarity filters. They do not perform permission or entity isolation, and retrieval itself is not authorization. Hybrid retrieval merges multiple result paths through RRF, and ReRank performs a second ordering of candidate text; whether either runs depends on the model and the settings. Knowledge bases built on different vector models cannot be associated together, so the vector model identifier is checked first and non-matching bases are excluded.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample. The source text consists of three sentences. Sentence one: "On 10 March 2025, East China regional distributor A submitted a diversion complaint form to the review team, stating that a shop on an e-commerce platform was offering batch number B2409 below the East China regional recommended retail price." Sentence two: "On 12 March 2025, anti-counterfeit code system records showed batch number B2409 had 500 units activated, with the activation location in South China." Sentence three: "On 15 March 2025, investigation photographs showed the e-commerce shop page listed the shipping location as the South China warehouse." The draft sentence to be judged is: "This batch of B2409 products was shipped by East China distributor A to South China." Comparing the draft against the source text: the source records the complainant as East China distributor A, the activation location as South China, and the shipping location as the South China warehouse. It does not record the shipping entity as A. The draft sentence is unsupported by the materials.
Configuration and implementation checks
The settings below concern citation-source comparison for this page's sample. The values are hypothetical starting points for this exercise, used for comparison against the source text, and are not official defaults.
| Configuration item | Hypothetical starting point for this exercise | Reason and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Associate only diversion review repositories confirmed to share the same vector model | Check the vector model identifier first, compare it against the identifier of the base to be associated, exclude non-matching bases |
| Search mode | Hybrid retrieval | Batch number B2409 is an exact identifier, so compare hit results against the full-text retrieval path |
| Citation limit | 2000 tokens as the hypothetical starting point | Compare against the total length of the three sample sentences to confirm the cited content covers the source text needed for judgment |
| Minimum relevance | 0.3 as the hypothetical starting point | Compare against returned retrieval scores and observe whether low-scoring fragments are filtered |
| Result reordering | Enable ReRank | Compare against the unreordered candidate order and observe changes in the ordering of relevant fragments |
| Citation handoff | Pass the citation array to the answering step | Compare each answer sentence against the cited source text and confirm whether the draft sentence has corresponding source text |
Three common errors
- Outputting the draft sentence "This batch of B2409 products was shipped by East China distributor A to South China" directly as a conclusion. The input is the three source sentences and the draft sentence; the comparison object is the shipping entity field; the source text does not record the shipping entity as A; the observable result is that the draft sentence has no corresponding sentence in the source text.
- Treating the activation location South China in the anti-counterfeit code record as equivalent to a confirmed diversion finding. The input is the second source sentence; the comparison object is the activation location against the conditions for a diversion finding; the source records only the activation location and no diversion finding; the observable result is that the inference lacks source support.
- Treating cited content returned by retrieval as an already authorized basis for action. The input is the citation array and the penalty notice material; the comparison object is the cited content against the authorization field; the cited content contains no authorization information; the observable result is that the authorization status remains pending verification.
How to verify the setup
- Input the three source sentences and the draft sentence, then compare the shipping entity in the draft sentence against what the source records. If the source text does not contain the shipping entity as A, the draft sentence is marked unsupported and is not output as a conclusion.
- Input batch number B2409 for retrieval and compare whether the returned cited content includes the three source sentences. If the citation array is empty or does not include the source text, record this as a miss and do not infer a system error.
- Input the citation array and the downstream answering step, then compare whether each answer sentence corresponds to cited source text. If the answer contains an entity or destination not recorded in the source text, record this as a citation handoff failure requiring human review.