What the documents look like
Inbound receiving and putaway handles the first physical-versus-record confirmation when goods enter the warehouse. Compared with picking and packing inside the warehouse, this stage aligns the arrival scene with procurement records for the first time. The main data comes from the WMS, ERP procurement, supplier delivery notes and barcode scanning. Daily documents include the procurement arrival note, the inbound acceptance note, the putaway task and the discrepancy report. Checking arrived quantities, printing barcodes and assigning storage locations are the time-consuming steps. A per-batch and daily update rhythm means a citation source must map to a specific batch and to the documents of that day. Errors here produce inventory that does not match physical stock, later picking mistakes and supplier disputes, so traceability must land on the documents and scan records themselves.
For citation tracing, the question is which arrival note, which acceptance check, which scan record and which discrepancy report a given inventory or supplier statement came from. The knowledge base search node outputs cited content as an array, and its length can be zero, which means the output path still completes even when nothing is found. That output is handed to the answering step, where each answer is checked against the cited original text. Linking knowledge bases requires the same vector model before they can be associated together; that requirement is limited to the vector search scope and does not extend to business-registry sites or other external systems. The minimum relevance value is a filter threshold and cannot serve as a permission or entity-isolation control. Retrieval does not constitute authorization.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
A hypothetical paper exercise sample is used below. The supplier delivery note states: supplier is a certain East China parts supplier; material is bearing type A; arrived quantity is 120 pieces; delivery date is 10 March 2026; batch number is B260310. The inbound acceptance note states: actual received is 118 pieces; discrepancy is a shortage of 2 pieces; acceptance clerk is the receiving team; acceptance date is 10 March 2026. One draft sentence to be judged reads: "The arrived quantity and the actual received quantity for this batch are consistent, so the full quantity can be put away." A separate handover request reads: "Please assign a storage location and generate a putaway task based on the actual received quantity of 118 pieces."
The citation chain must keep the same subject, the same period and the same field. A contradiction requires explicitly mutually exclusive values in the same field. A draft that is unsupported or only has evidence from a related stage is recorded as pending verification, not as a negation or conflict. A pending review does not by itself show that operating permission is missing. Signing, reaching cooperation and contract effectiveness are three different facts. A quotation validity period does not indicate a supply period. Authorization or effectiveness clauses are not invented to obtain a definite answer; evidence gaps are kept open. Material needed for a check must sit inside an accessible target retrieval scope or a clearly stated manual input; when it is missing, the gap is recorded.
Configuration and implementation checks
The table below is built around this page's sample and lists officially described settings or implementation checks. The values are only starting points for this hypothetical exercise, used for comparison against the sample text, and do not represent official defaults.
| Configuration item | Hypothetical starting point for this exercise | Reason and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Linked knowledge bases | Inbound document base and supplier profile base | First check whether the two bases share the same vector model identifier; if not, exclude them and do not run cross-model retrieval |
| Search mode | Hybrid search | Batch numbers and material names are precise queries; semantic and full-text recall are combined through RRF |
| Minimum relevance | Hypothetical starting point 0.4 | Compare against the batch-number query result for the sample and observe whether low-relevance fragments are filtered out |
| Citation limit | Hypothetical starting point 2000 tokens | Compare against the length of the original document text and confirm that key fields enter the cited content completely |
| Result rerank | Enabled according to the setting | When a rerank model is available, candidates are reordered and filtered by the rerank score |
| Citation output handoff | Array output passed to the answering step | Check the array length against each original passage; a zero-length array is handled by the downstream design for empty results |
Several items are implementation checks rather than switches. The same vector model requirement is confirmed by reading the model identifier on each linked base and excluding bases that do not match; cross-model retrieval is not executed to compare missed recalls. The RRF step is a fusion process for mixed results, not a toggle. The total flow diagram lists optional paths that are not executed on every request: image retrieval requires a corresponding image input and model capability, and reranking requires a model and an enabled setting. Thinking budget is a reasoning budget and is not reused as a citation token limit.
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval hit as authorization to execute. The draft sentence "the full quantity can be put away" and the acceptance note "actual received 118 pieces, shortage of 2 pieces" take different values in the quantity field, which is a same-field contradiction. Finding the document only shows the material exists; it does not show that putaway has been approved.
- Treating a pending review state as an approved state. The handover request "assign a storage location and generate a putaway task based on the actual received quantity of 118 pieces" is in a to-be-judged state and has not received authorization, so it cannot be read as showing that location assignment has been executed or that putaway is complete.
- Treating minimum relevance as a permission filter. That value is a filter threshold used only in semantic retrieval or result reranking. It cannot exclude unrelated business records or unauthorized records, and retrieval does not constitute authorization.
How to verify the setup
- Input the hypothetical delivery note and acceptance note text. Compare the draft sentence "the arrived quantity and the actual received quantity are consistent" against the quantity fields of both documents. A mutually exclusive value in the same field is judged a contradiction, and the draft sentence does not hold.
- Input the handover request. Compare the request content against the discrepancy record in the acceptance note. The request states no authorization basis and the discrepancy is unresolved, so it is judged pending verification; the evidence gap is recorded and execution is not presumed.
- Input a batch-number query. Compare the returned citation array against the sample original text and check item by item whether the citations point to that batch's documents. When the array length is zero, check the downstream design against the empty-result handoff and do not claim that retrieval must return empty. The observation and the failure branch are recorded rather than a guaranteed first hit, a guaranteed full recall or a guaranteed empty result for an unrelated query.