What the documents look like
Third-party overseas warehouses serve multiple sales channels, and the seller allocates stock across them. Replenishment planning, inbound appointment requests, inventory aging tables and last-mile delivery orders sit in different systems: warehouse WMS, ERP sales forecasts, freight forwarder systems and carrier statements. The same procurement and supplier records move between these documents. Citation tracing answers a narrow question: when a replenishment conclusion, a supplier lead time or an aging cost figure appears, which version and which field of which source material does it come from.
Materials update weekly or daily, so source versions change with the cycle. Before trusting a citation, confirm the cited version is still the current effective one, then check whether the quoted content matches the original wording. The retrieval step recalls candidate content; it does not verify supplier qualifications, approve procurement or decide whether a contract has taken effect.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node can select one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model, used for vector search. Reference content is output as an array whose length may be zero, which means the output path still completes even when nothing is found. An empty array does not mean the workflow failed, and it does not mean a particular material does not exist.
The minimum relevance setting is a filter threshold that takes effect only in semantic search or when result re-ranking is used. It does not perform permission or entity isolation. Hybrid search merges multiple result paths through RRF, re-ranking requires an available model and must be enabled by configuration, and image retrieval requires corresponding image input and model capability. These optional paths are not executed on every request.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample
The following are paper materials used for this exercise, not a real customer or real document.
Material one: "Overseas warehouse WMS inventory snapshot (hypothetical batch A-01, date 2025-03-10): SKU-X has 120 units available in the US West warehouse, 80 units in transit, expected inbound 2025-03-18."
Material two: "Supplier profile card (hypothetical supplier S-07, version 2025-02-28): quote valid until 2025-04-30, standard lead time 15 working days, no minimum order quantity stated."
Draft sentence to be judged: "Supplier S-07's quote is valid until 2025-04-30, therefore the supply period covers through 2025-04-30."
The draft sentence treats quote validity as the supply period, mixing two fields. Material two does not state a supply period, so the claim is unsupported and pending verification.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration or check item | Value or action for this page | Basis and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Select a set of knowledge bases sharing the same vector model | Compare selected knowledge base identifiers against vector model identifiers; exclude mismatches and do not run cross-model retrieval |
| Search mode | Hypothetical starting point for this exercise is hybrid search | This starting point observes semantic recall and keyword hits together; compare against semantic-only results to see differences on identifier and model number fields |
| Reference limit | Set in tokens; hypothetical starting point for this exercise is provided by the implementer with a recorded reason | Compare against actual candidate content length and observe the truncation point; top k is not used |
| Minimum relevance | Hypothetical starting point for this exercise is provided by the implementer with a recorded reason | Compare against re-rank score or semantic score and observe filtered entries; this threshold does not exclude unrelated businesses or unauthorized records |
| Reference content handoff | Pass retrieval output item by item to the answering step | Check each answer sentence against the cited original text and observe whether conclusions absent from the source appear |
| Material currency check | Retrieve separately with current and historical versions | Compare the version identifier returned with the content and confirm whether the cited version is still effective |
Three common errors
- Treating quote validity as the supply period. Input is material two and the draft sentence; comparison is between the "quote validity" field and the "supply period" field; material two states only the former while the draft asserts the latter, so the claim is unsupported.
- Treating an empty reference array as retrieval failure. Input is the search node output; comparison is between array length and workflow status; when length is zero the output path still completes, so the result is no matching content, not an error.
- Using a similarity threshold as a substitute for permission judgment. Input is the minimum relevance setting and retrieval results; comparison is between score and record ownership; the threshold only filters low-relevance content and does not exclude unauthorized records, which require a downstream system implementation.
How to verify the setup
- Take material one and the draft sentence "SKU-X has 120 units available, therefore the 80 units in transit have been received." Input is the two texts; comparison is between the "in transit" and "received" status fields; material one states only an expected inbound date while the draft asserts receipt, so the claim is unsupported.
- Take material two and the draft sentence "Supplier S-07 has a standard lead time of 15 working days, therefore the quote is valid until 2025-04-30." Input is the two texts; comparison is between the "standard lead time" and "quote validity" fields; the two fields share subject and period but neither value implies the other, so this is field mixing.
- Use the paper input
[]to check the downstream handoff design. Input is a reference array of length zero; comparison is whether the downstream node still executes; observe whether the downstream handles it as no reference content. Do not claim that a fictional rule's retrieval always returns an empty array.
All of the above is paper checking. No deployment, testing, approval or synchronization action has occurred. Fields not stated in the materials remain unknown; a pending review state does not constitute authorization, and quote validity does not indicate a supply period.