What the documents look like
Price and display checks for chain stores take place during ordinary trading periods, where the focus is sustained execution of standards. The documents handled day to day include store visit photographs, price tag lists, display standards and rectification notices. Data sources include the supervision system, POS price lists, store cameras and head office promotion schedules. Updates arrive weekly or monthly.
Within this setting, the inventory procurement and supplier materials task appears as supplier quotations, procurement reconciliation statements, goods receipt evidence and the basis for price tag changes. These materials need to be cross-checked against the prices actually displayed in stores. Supplier materials often carry fields of varying structure: quotation validity periods, supply scope and settlement conditions. A quotation validity period does not indicate a supply period. A pending review status does not indicate that approval is absent, and it does not indicate that approval has been granted. Signed, cooperation reached and contract effective are three distinct facts.
In the knowledge base, materials are held in libraries, collections and data, and the smallest search unit is the library. One set of data can map to several vectors, and an indexes field records the array of vector IDs. Document parsing and chunking must preserve a document identity and version that can point back to the source text, and must avoid splitting conditions and explanations away from the content they constrain. Because a data group is recalled when any one of its vectors is hit, chunking precision directly affects whether recalled content stays complete.
Constraints at the document chunking step
Full-text search suits precise queries such as numbers, models and proper nouns. Semantic search relies on vector similarity. Hybrid search combines semantic recall and full-text recall, and RRF merges the multiple result paths. A ReRank model can reorder candidate text a second time. Image retrieval requires that a corresponding index was built at ingestion time, and depends on a vision model or a vector model that supports image input. Retrieval does not perform authorization checks. The minimum relevance score is a filtering threshold, and it does not constitute a permission or entity isolation mechanism. A similarity setting does not exclude unrelated businesses or unauthorized records.
A hypothetical paper exercise sample is provided here for illustration only. The source text to be checked reads: "Supplier A submitted a quotation on 1 March 2025. The quotation validity period runs to 31 March 2025. The supply scope covers 12 stores in the East China region. Settlement is monthly, 30 days. The quotation status is 'pending procurement department review'." A draft sentence to be assessed reads: "Supplier A's quotation has been approved and supply to East China stores may begin on 1 March 2025."
Checking compares the draft sentence against the source text. The source text records only that the quotation is pending review, and it sets explicit boundaries for the validity period and the supply scope. It records neither an approval fact nor a supply start authorization. The draft sentence is therefore unsupported or pending verification, not contradicted by an opposing recorded value. Where a field is not provided, it remains unknown. No approval, deployment, refund or other business action is claimed to have occurred.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Hypothetical starting value for this exercise | Reason and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Search mode | Hybrid search | Supplier numbers and natural language questions coexist, so semantic recall and full-text recall are both used and merged through RRF |
| Minimum relevance score | 0.35 | Hypothetical starting value to filter low-relevance fragments; compare against the recall range when no value is set, and observe whether unrelated fragments decrease |
| Reference limit | 3000 tokens | Hypothetical starting value estimated from the context needed for one supplier material check; compare against a smaller value and observe whether conditional sentences are truncated |
| Question optimization | Enabled | Coreference resolution is needed for follow-up questions about supplier status; compare against the disabled state and observe whether short-question recall improves |
| Result reranking | Enabled | When candidates are numerous, rerank scores are used for filtering; compare against vector scores alone and observe whether ordering tracks the question more closely |
| Image index | Checked against what was actually generated at ingestion | If store visit photographs are to participate in retrieval, confirm that an image description index or image vector index was built at ingestion |
The reference limit uses the documented unit of tokens. The minimum relevance score takes effect only under semantic search or when result reranking is used. Question optimization adds one model call before retrieval. Reranking requires a model and must be enabled according to settings. Image retrieval requires a corresponding image input and model capability. The optional paths in the overall document flow are not all executed on every request.
Three common errors
- Treating the quotation validity period as the supply period. The source text states the validity period runs to 31 March 2025 and does not state a supply period. If a draft sentence reads "supply may begin on 1 March 2025", the validity period field has been conflated with a supply authorization field. The check inputs the source text and the draft sentence, compares whether both refer to the same subject, the same period and the same field, and observes whether the draft introduces an authorization fact absent from the source text.
- Treating a pending review status as approved. The source text status is "pending procurement department review" while the draft sentence states "has been approved". The check compares the status field values and observes whether they are mutually exclusive. Pending review does not demonstrate that operating permission is absent, and it is not equal to approval.
- Treating a successful upload as an updated retrieval index. If the actual training and index state is not checked after materials change, retrieval may still return an older chunk. The check inputs the changed material, compares the retrieval result against the source version, and observes whether the returned content points to the current version.
How to verify the setup
- For the draft sentence in the hypothetical sample, input that sentence together with the source text, compare whether "pending procurement department review" and "has been approved" are mutually exclusive values of the same field, and observe that the assessment should be unsupported or pending verification. If retrieval returns the source chunk and the draft sentence conflicts with the status field in the source text, the draft sentence does not hold.
- For the quotation validity period and the supply scope, input "what is the validity period of Supplier A's quotation" and "which stores does Supplier A's supply scope cover", compare whether the returned chunks contain the validity period field and the supply scope field respectively, and observe whether the condition statement is retained in the same chunk as the content it constrains. If the returned content merges the validity period and the supply period into one statement, the chunking needs adjustment.
- For the empty-result branch, use the paper input [] to check the downstream design and observe how the retrieval layer handles the absence of candidates. It cannot be claimed that a fictional rule makes retrieval return []. If actual retrieval returns an empty result, record that observation and do not infer an automatic business action.
Libraries across different vector models cannot be jointly associated. Check the identifiers first and exclude those that do not conform, and do not run cross-model retrieval to compare missed recalls. Retrieval and forms do not constitute authorization execution. Pending review, signed and contract effective are different facts. Where material needed for a check is missing from the accessible target retrieval scope or from a clearly defined manual input, record the gap and leave it as missing evidence.