What the documents look like
General trade import declaration work centres on customs value, freight and insurance, and duty payment. The working materials are the import declaration form, commercial invoice, packing list, bill of lading, and contract. These come from the International Trade Single Window, customs tariff schedules, forwarder arrival notices, and foreign exchange payment documents. Importers, customs brokers, and customs managers pull these records during operating reviews and exception reviews, where a mismatch in the parties, amounts, transaction terms, or periods between documents can surface as a supplementary tax, a demurrage exposure, or an administrative penalty.
Two features of this material shape the retrieval task. First, the documents are updated per shipment, so the review set changes with each declaration rather than sitting in one stable corpus. Second, the documents must agree with one another on the same field: the same contract number, the same transaction term, the same dates. Retrieval in this setting exists to return the cited document content accurately for a review, and a returned citation is not an authorization and not a business execution result.
Constraints at the retrieval step
The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that use the same vector model. Knowledge bases built on different vector models cannot be associated together; the model identifier must be checked first and non-matching bases excluded. Search modes are semantic retrieval, full-text retrieval, and hybrid retrieval. Hybrid retrieval merges the two result sets through RRF, which is a fusion process in the pipeline, not a switch that is turned on. The citation limit is measured in tokens. The minimum relevance value takes effect only under semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used. Question optimization performs coreference resolution and question expansion and adds one model call before retrieval. The cited content output is returned as an array and its length can be 0, so the downstream path still runs when nothing is found. Retrieval and relevance scores do not perform permission or entity isolation, and a retrieval result does not replace business authorization.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample: a customs manager for an importer submits paper material during an exception review. The source text reads: "Contract number HYP-2024-017, seller is overseas Company A, buyer is domestic Company B, transaction term CIF, invoice amount USD 120,000, bill of lading date 12 March 2024, declaration filing date 15 March 2024." The draft sentence to be assessed is: "The contract has taken effect and the goods payment has been settled." The material does not state an effectiveness clause or a payment status, so the assessment is unsupported or pending verification, and it cannot be written as a negation or a conflict.
Configuration and implementation checks
The table below concerns this sample and this page's task only. It lists documented settings or implementation checks tied to the search node and the retrieval parameters. The hypothetical starting values are for this paper exercise only and are not official defaults.
| Configuration item | Hypothetical starting value for this exercise | Reason and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Associate only the import document base with the same vector model | Check each base's vector model identifier; exclude any base whose identifier differs |
| Search mode | Start with semantic retrieval, then compare with full-text retrieval | Run the sample question against semantic, full-text, and hybrid paths and observe the differences in returned content |
| Citation limit | Hypothetical starting value 2000 tokens | Compare short and long document fragments to see whether cited content is truncated |
| Minimum relevance | Hypothetical starting value 0.5 | Label relevant and irrelevant samples first, then compare the returned changes after adjusting the threshold |
| Question optimization | Not enabled for this sample, whose question already has a complete subject | Compare the original question with the optimized question and check whether the subject was altered |
| Result reranking | Not enabled when no rerank model is configured | Confirm whether a rerank model is available, then compare the rerank score with the vector score |
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval hit as an authorization or a business execution. Input is the sample source text; the comparison is between the returned cited content and the authorization status; the observable result is that cited content appears while the material states neither effectiveness nor payment. The only correct record is an evidence gap, and the contract cannot be judged effective or the payment settled.
- Treating minimum relevance as an entity or permission filter. Input is a query containing an unrelated company name; the comparison is between the returned results and the query subject; the observable result is that relevance filtering affects ranking and threshold only and cannot exclude unrelated companies or unauthorized records.
- Forcing knowledge bases with different vector models into one association. Input is two knowledge bases whose vector model identifiers differ; the comparison is the model identifier field; the observable result is that a differing identifier means exclusion, and no comparison of missed recalls or redundancy can proceed from there.
How to verify the setup
- Using the hypothetical sample source text and the draft sentence above, submit a retrieval request and compare whether the returned cited content contains the contract number, transaction term, and date fields. The condition is met when the fields agree and no effectiveness or payment conclusion has been added; a missing field is recorded as a gap.
- Using an explicit paper input of an empty array, compare whether the cited output length is 0 and whether the downstream path continues. The condition is met when the path runs through, without claiming that an invented rule necessarily returns an empty result.
- Using two knowledge bases whose vector model identifiers differ, compare whether the association is rejected or the identifier is excluded. The condition is met when only the observed identifier difference is recorded and the non-matching base is excluded; no runtime result may be inferred from this.