What the documents look like
Group-buy presale orders collect orders first and organize procurement and fulfillment afterward. For inventory purchasing and supplier records, the everyday materials are the presale product table, the group-order result, the procurement plan, and the cut-off notice. These materials update daily or per session. Citation tracing has to answer a narrow question: do the quantity in a procurement plan and the quotation and supply scope in supplier records come from the same checkable source text? When document versions differ, one supplier's quotation and supply commitment may sit in separate files, so a citation has to name the source file and its valid scope.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that use the same vector model. Its output is a citation array whose length can be zero, so the downstream path still runs when nothing is retrieved. Retrieval recalls candidate content and does not perform authorization checks. A similarity score is not a category, entity, or permission filter, and it does not exclude unrelated businesses or unauthorized records. The citation limit is measured in tokens. The minimum relevance value takes effect only under semantic search or result reranking. Reranking, image retrieval, and question optimization are optional paths that require the corresponding model and must be enabled by settings; they do not all run on every request.
Hypothetical paper exercise. Source text one: "Supplier A fresh produce quotation, March 2025: white radish 1.2 yuan per jin, valid until 31 March 2025." Source text two: "18 March group-order result: white radish presale 800 jin." Draft sentence to be assessed: "The procurement plan places an order with Supplier A for 800 jin of white radish at 1.2 yuan per jin, with supply covering April." Comparison: the quotation states a price validity period and does not state a supply period; the group-order result states a presale quantity and does not state that procurement has been placed. The draft treats the quotation validity as a supply period and treats the group-order quantity as a placed order quantity. Neither point is supported by the source texts.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration or check item | Hypothetical starting value for this exercise | Reason and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Supplier records base and procurement plan base only | Compare the vector model identifiers of the two bases first; they can be associated together only when identical |
| Citation limit | Hypothetical starting value 2000 tokens | Compare against the length of a single group-order result entry so one complete procurement entry is covered |
| Minimum relevance | Hypothetical starting value 0.5 | Compare against the number of unfiltered candidates and observe whether unrelated fragments are filtered out |
| Search mode | Hybrid search | Compare against semantic search alone for hits on identifiers and supplier names |
| Result reranking | Enabled when a rerank model is available | Compare ordering against results without reranking |
| Citation display check | Item-by-item comparison against source text | Compare whether the answer citation matches the source subject and field |
Three common errors
- Treating a quotation validity period as a supply period. Check the input: the quotation source text and the draft sentence. Compare whether the fields stated in the quotation include a supply period. Observable result: the draft contains a supply-period statement that the source text does not state, which is an error.
- Treating a group-order quantity as a placed order quantity. Check the input: the group-order result source text and the procurement plan. Compare whether the group-order result states that procurement has been executed. Observable result: the draft writes the presale quantity directly as a placed order quantity, which is an error.
- Treating a retrieval score as authorization or a supplier filter. Check the input: the search parameters and the candidate citations. Compare whether the score is used to exclude unauthorized suppliers. Observable result: excluding a specific supplier through a similarity setting is an error.
How to verify the setup
- Input the quotation source text above and the draft sentence. Compare whether the draft contains a supply-period statement. The condition is met when no supply period appears that the source text does not state.
- Input the group-order result source text and the procurement plan. Compare whether the procurement plan is marked as having placed an order. The condition is met when the presale quantity is not written as a placed order quantity.
- Input a paper empty array
[]. Compare whether the downstream node accepts it as an empty citation. The condition is met when the downstream node does not terminate with an error. Whether an actual retrieval returns an empty array remains unknown and must be recorded from observation.