What the documents look like
Regional dealer stock replenishment runs as daily rolling orders rather than seasonal centralized ordering. Replenishment requests, inventory turnover sheets, outbound delivery notes and payment collection plans are produced continuously on weekly and monthly cycles. Operating reports and exception reviews need to match the quantity and date on a replenishment request against the balance on the inventory turnover sheet, the actual outbound movement on the delivery note, and the receipt status on the payment collection plan. Source material comes from four places: dealer ERP, the brand ordering system, warehouse inventory, and sales collections. The same replenishment can carry different field names and different time conventions across these systems. Citation tracing addresses one question: can every figure in a report be traced back to a specific document, and can every conclusion in an exception review point to its original material. Data updates on weekly and monthly cycles. This page does not derive batch synchronization or real-time trigger mechanisms from that cadence.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node selects one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model, and outputs citations as an array whose length may be zero. When the array is empty, the output path still completes. Whether a retrieved result is used by the answering step requires checking each answer statement against the cited source text. A similarity score serves as a ranking and filtering basis; it does not perform permission or entity isolation, and retrieval itself does not constitute authorization. Document timeliness requires comparing the current version against the historical version, and whether to adopt a citation still depends on review against the effective version.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample: a regional dealer submits a replenishment request whose source text reads "Requesting entity: East China regional dealer A; replenishment object: model A stock; requested quantity: 300 units; request date: March 10, 2025; authorization status is pending review by the brand channel manager." For the same period, the inventory turnover sheet records a model A balance of 180 units, the outbound delivery note records 120 units shipped on March 8, and the payment collection plan shows the dealer's February payment has not yet arrived. A draft sentence awaiting judgment reads "The dealer's March replenishment request has been approved, and model A can be scheduled for shipment." The evidence needed to judge it is a review record or approval document; in the sample the authorization status is pending review, so the draft's "has been approved" is unsupported.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Hypothetical starting point for this exercise | Reason for the choice and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Select knowledge bases holding replenishment requests and inventory turnover sheets that share one vector model | Check the knowledge base identifier and the vector model identifier; bases with different vector models are not associated together |
| Search mode | Use semantic search and full-text search together | Use full-text search for model numbers and document numbers, semantic search for natural language descriptions |
| Citation upper limit | Hypothetical starting point of 800 tokens | Compare against the average length of sample documents and observe whether citations cover the entity and date fields |
| Minimum relevance | Hypothetical starting point of 0.4 | Compare against sample retrieval scores and observe whether unrelated fragments are filtered out |
| Result reranking | Enable when a rerank model is available | Perform a second ordering of candidate results and filter by score |
| Citation handoff | Pass the citation array to the answering step | Check each answer statement against the cited source text for entity, object and status |
Three common errors
- Reading a pending review status as approved. The input is the replenishment request text "authorization status is pending review by the brand channel manager"; the comparison object is the draft sentence "has been approved"; the observable result is that the draft sentence lacks support from an approval document.
- Treating a retrieval hit as completed authorization. The input is the citation array returned by the knowledge base search; the comparison object is the authorization status field; the observable result is that the cited content only shows the material exists and does not show the approval was executed.
- Associating knowledge bases that use different vector models. The input is the vector model identifiers of the two bases; the comparison object is whether the identifiers match; the observable result is that when the identifiers do not match, joint association is not performed, and the actual observation is recorded without inferring runtime outcomes.
How to verify the setup
- Input the hypothetical sample's replenishment request text and the draft sentence, compare the draft's "has been approved" against the source text's "pending review by the brand channel manager," and the condition is met when the draft sentence is marked as unsupported.
- Input the hypothetical sample's inventory turnover sheet and outbound delivery note, compare the model A balance against the outbound record, and the condition is met when each cited item can be traced to its document source.
- Input an explicit paper-level empty array [], compare whether the downstream design accepts an empty citation, and the condition is met when the empty array completes the path and is not judged as an error.