What the documents look like
Central procurement and distribution work in chain retail turns on four document families: collective purchasing contracts, replenishment plans, delivery notes, and store requisition forms. The supply chain center aggregates store demand, arranges delivery waves, and coordinates supplier delivery, drawing on ERP purchasing, WMS, store POS, and supplier delivery data, with updates at daily or weekly cadence. For store service and internal training, the material state matters as much as the material content. A replenishment plan sitting in a pending-review state and a signed collective purchasing contract occupy different fact levels. The pending plan does not establish that an operator lacks permission, and the signed contract does not by itself establish that the contract has taken effect. The citation tracing task is to let every statement shown in training return to the original text, version, and validity scope of the corresponding material. A retrieval hit and a filled form are not authorization.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model. Its output is an array of cited content whose length may be zero; when the array is empty, the output path still runs through. The minimum relevance value is a 0-1 filtering threshold that applies only in semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used. It filters low-relevance results and does not perform permission or entity isolation. The citation cap controls tokens, which differs from top k. Hybrid retrieval fuses multiple result paths through RRF, and RRF is a fusion process rather than a switch. Image retrieval requires image input and the corresponding model capability, reranking requires a model and is enabled by configuration, and the paths drawn in the documentation flowchart do not mean every request executes all of them. Knowledge bases built on different vector models cannot be associated together, so an identifier check comes first and non-matching bases are excluded.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample: the material text reads "March 10, 2025, East China distribution center replenishment plan HP-0310, status is pending review, covering store requisitions from March 11 to March 17." and "Collective purchasing contract JC-2025-014 was submitted by the purchasing manager on February 28, 2025, signature field blank." The draft sentence to be assessed is "HP-0310 has been approved and can proceed to store delivery." A separate handover request reads "Please confirm that JC-2025-014 has taken effect and arrange this week's delivery on that basis." Neither item states an approval or effectiveness fact.
Configuration and implementation checks
The table below addresses this page's sample and lists only officially described settings or implementation check items. The hypothetical starting values serve this paper comparison only and are not official defaults.
| Configuration or check item | Hypothetical starting value for this exercise | Reason and comparison object |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Select purchasing and distribution bases that share one vector model | Compare the vector model identifier against the base holding the sample material; exclude on mismatch |
| Search mode | Full-text retrieval | The sample contains identifiers such as HP-0310 and JC-2025-014; compare against semantic retrieval recall behavior |
| Minimum relevance | Paper starting value 0.3 for this exercise | Compare against traceability of the sample text; applies only on the semantic retrieval or rerank path |
| Citation cap | Paper starting value 2000 tokens for this exercise | Compare against the length of the two to three sample sentences so the citation covers the fields needed for judgment |
| Citation output check | Empty array is permitted | Compare against the downstream handling design; an empty array does not mean the workflow errored out |
| Material currency check | Use one current version and one historical version | Compare against the sample date range; when versions differ, record them separately |
Three common errors
- Treating a pending-review state as approved. The input is the replenishment plan with "status is pending review" from the sample, the comparison object is the draft sentence "has been approved," and the observable result is that the two values differ, so the draft sentence is not supported.
- Treating submission for signature as contract effectiveness. The input is the collective purchasing contract with a blank signature field, the comparison object is "has taken effect" in the handover request, and the observable result is that signature, commercial agreement, and contract effectiveness are three distinct facts, so the request remains unverified.
- Treating a retrieval hit as authorization. The input is the citation array returned by the search node, the comparison object is the business action "arrange this week's delivery on that basis," and the observable result is that retrieval and form-collected values do not constitute approval or execution authority, which requires separate system implementation.
How to verify the setup
- Input the two sample source sentences and the draft sentence "HP-0310 has been approved and can proceed to store delivery." Compare the state value of the same subject, the same period, and the same field. The support condition is met only when the source text contains an explicit approval record; the expectation here is that the draft sentence is not supported.
- Input the handover request and the signature field information of JC-2025-014. Compare "has taken effect" against the blank signature field. The condition is met only when a completed signature and an effectiveness clause are present; the expectation here is that the evidence gap remains open.
- Input an explicit paper empty array []. Compare whether the downstream handling design continues on empty citation, and observe whether the output path executes. The expectation here is that the path runs through and produces no business action; this check does not claim that a fictional rule search must return an empty array.