What the documents look like
For general trade export declaration work, the operating review and exception review materials are the export declaration form, the commercial invoice, the packing list and the contract. A key difference from general trade import declaration is that export declaration also affects the matching of export tax refund vouchers. That difference shapes the tracing requirement: a review that cites only a system aggregate figure cannot answer which declaration form, which invoice and which packing list a given shipment line corresponds to. Operational data updates per shipment, and sources include the China International Trade Single Window, the customs code library, carrier bills of lading and the enterprise ERP. Citation tracing in operating and exception reviews must be able to point a report line back to a specific document and a specific field, and state which material that field came from and what state it is in.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node can select one or more knowledge bases that use the same vector model for vector search. Its output is an array of cited content, and the length can be zero, meaning that even when no content is found the output path still completes. The citation limit is controlled by tokens. The minimum relevance value takes effect only under semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used. Hybrid retrieval merges multiple result paths through RRF. Reranking requires a model and is enabled according to settings. Image retrieval requires image input and model capability. These mechanisms decide recall and ordering only; they do not constitute permission or entity isolation, and retrieval itself is not authorization. Tracing checks must run inside a search scope the operator is entitled to access or inside explicit manual input, and any missing evidence is recorded as a gap.
Hypothetical drill sample: a document specialist at a foreign trade company is reviewing in March 2025 and has three materials at hand. Material one is a draft export declaration form with a declaration date of 10 March 2025, a domestic consignor of Company A, a commodity code field filled with a Class A code, and a blank freight column. Material two is a commercial invoice numbered INV-2025-0310, with a buyer of Company B, an amount of 12,000 US dollars, and trade term FOB. Material three is a packing list with 240 cartons and a gross weight of 4,800 kilograms. The draft sentence to be judged is: "The freight column of this declaration form has been fully declared according to the invoice amount and can be used directly for export tax refund voucher matching." That draft sentence concerns a subject, documents and a field state, and each item must be compared against the source text.
Configuration and implementation checks
Configuration is built around this page's sample and lists only settings the official documents describe or implementation checks to perform.
| Configuration item | Hypothetical trial starting point for this page | Reason for the choice and what it is compared against |
|---|---|---|
| Linked knowledge bases | Select only bases containing the export declaration, invoice and packing list samples | First check the vector model identifier of each base; they can be linked together only when identical |
| Search mode | Hybrid retrieval | Precise fields such as codes and invoice numbers coexist with natural language descriptions |
| Citation limit | Set a starting value in tokens | Compare against the paragraph lengths of the sample documents so one long passage does not crowd out the rest |
| Minimum relevance | Set a starting value between 0 and 1 | Takes effect only under semantic retrieval or reranking; compare against the recalled results |
| Result reranking | Enabled according to settings | Requires a reranking model; compare against candidate order without reranking |
| Citation output handling | Pass the search output to the answering step | Check each answer sentence against the cited source text |
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval hit as authorization. The input is the retrieval request for the sample above; the comparison object is the retrieval output against the authorization state; the observable result is that a citation array exists while the material remains in draft state, so the sentence cannot be judged usable directly for export tax refund voucher matching.
- Linking knowledge bases with different vector models together. The input is the model identifiers of two bases; the comparison object is whether the identifiers match; the observable result is that a mismatch excludes the base, and no cross-model retrieval is run to compare missed recalls.
- Treating an empty citation array as an error or as missing authorization. The input is a paper-level empty array []; the comparison object is the downstream handling design; the observable result is that the path completes with no matched content, and the missing evidence is still recorded as a gap.
How to verify the setup
- Citation source check. The input is the source text of the three sample materials and the draft sentence; the comparison is between the freight column state asserted by the draft sentence and the fact that the draft declaration form's freight column is blank; the observable result is that the two disagree, so the draft sentence is not supported.
- Citation output handling check. The input is the array output by the search node; the comparison is the correspondence between each citation in the array and the answer sentences; the observable result is that each answer sentence can be traced back to source text, or is explicitly marked as having no citation.
- Material currency and version check. The input is the current version and a historical version of the sample; the comparison is the version of the field the draft sentence relies on; the observable result is that the current effective version is used, with the historical version kept only as a comparison record.