What the documents look like
General trade import declaration work centres on dutiable value, freight and insurance, and tax payment. Each declaration produces an import declaration form, a commercial invoice, a packing list, a bill of lading, and a contract. These materials arrive from the International Trade Single Window, customs tariff schedules, freight forwarder arrival notices, and foreign exchange payment documents, and the fields across them must correspond item by item. Cross-border materials frequently carry Chinese, English, or other language fields, so the description of goods, the transaction terms, the currency, and the amount may be written differently from one document to the next. Citation tracing answers which document a retrieved passage came from, which version of that document, which consignment it belongs to, and whether the passage is used within its authorized scope. The material update frequency is per declaration, so the retrieval basis should be re-checked as each consignment's documents change.
Two features shape this task directly. First, the same consignment is described across several documents whose fields can disagree, so a retrieved sentence is only traceable when it can be matched back to a specific field in a specific document version. Second, the materials are multilingual and the retrieval layer can return semantically similar content across languages, which means a match in meaning does not by itself confirm that the underlying document supports the drafted wording.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node can be associated with one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model, and it outputs citations as an array whose length may be zero. A zero-length array means the output path still runs; it does not mean the workflow has errored and stopped. Retrieved results need to be passed to the answering step, where each answer is checked against the cited source text.
Semantic retrieval, full-text retrieval, hybrid retrieval, and result re-ranking are optional paths. Image retrieval requires the corresponding image input and model capability, and re-ranking requires a re-ranking model and must be enabled according to its settings. RRF is the fusion process for combining multiple retrieval channels; it is not a switch that can be turned on. The minimum relevance score is a filter threshold and does not perform permission or entity isolation. Retrieval itself is not authorization. The citation limit is measured in tokens, while the thinking budget is a model reasoning parameter; the two cannot be substituted for each other.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample: a consignment from one importer arrives at port in March 2026, and the customs broker receives a freight forwarder arrival notice and a commercial invoice. The commercial invoice text states "Invoice No. INV-2026-0312, Date 2026-03-02, Buyer: Shanghai Sample Trading Co., Ltd., Seller: Overseas Sample Trading Co., Total Amount USD 48,000, Terms FOB". The bill of lading text states "B/L No. SAMPLEBL0312, Port of Loading: Singapore, Port of Discharge: Shanghai, Consignee: Shanghai Sample Trading Co., Ltd.". The draft sentence to be assessed is: "The transaction terms for this consignment are CIF, and freight and insurance are included in the invoice amount." The comparison object is the commercial invoice text and the draft sentence; the compared field is the transaction terms; the source text states FOB and the draft sentence states CIF. The two values are mutually exclusive in the same field, so the draft sentence is not supported. Authorization boundary: these materials are limited to checking this one declaration and may not be used for another consignment or provided externally.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Hypothetical trial starting point | Reason and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Select the declaration materials knowledge base for this consignment | Check the selected knowledge base identifiers and whether the vector models are the same; different models are not associated together |
| Search mode | Hybrid retrieval | Compare hit results against semantic retrieval and full-text retrieval, observing performance on identifiers and natural-language questions |
| Minimum relevance score | Hypothetical starting point 0.5 | Compare with 0.3 and 0.7 for the number of citations retained after filtering, observing whether checkable source text remains |
| Citation limit | Hypothetical starting point 3000 tokens | Compare with 2000 and 5000 for the length of cited content, observing whether the required document fields are covered |
| Question optimization | Off | Compare with on for retrieval in follow-up turns, observing whether coreference resolution is necessary |
| Result re-ranking | Enabled according to settings | When a re-ranking model is available, compare ordering before and after re-ranking, observing whether the score is used for filtering |
These values are hypothetical trial starting points for this exercise and are not official defaults. They need to be compared with adjacent values and the actual observation recorded.
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval hit as authorization. The input is one hybrid retrieval request; the comparison item is the retrieval results against the authorized scope; the observable result is whether the cited content falls outside this consignment's materials. Retrieval returns related content and does not judge usage permission.
- Writing FOB as CIF. The input is the commercial invoice text and the draft sentence; the comparison item is the transaction terms field; the observable result is that the two values are mutually exclusive and the draft sentence is not supported. A contradiction exists only when the same field carries explicitly mutually exclusive values.
- Treating an empty citation array as an error. The input is the search node output; the comparison item is the array length against the downstream design; the observable result is that the path still runs when the length is zero. An empty array does not mean the workflow has stopped.
How to verify the setup
- Input the commercial invoice text and the draft sentence from the hypothetical sample, compare the transaction terms field, and note that the draft sentence states CIF while the source text states FOB. The two are mutually exclusive, so the draft sentence is judged unsupported. The expected result is to record that gap without inventing authorization or effective clauses.
- Input the bill of lading text from the hypothetical sample and compare the consignee against the invoice buyer. Both are Shanghai Sample Trading Co., Ltd., so the same entity matches in the same field. The expected result is that the citation source can be tied to this consignment.
- Input an explicit paper-level empty array [] and compare it against the downstream answering step's design for handling it, observing whether it is processed as zero citations. The expected result is that the path runs and records no citations, without claiming that retrieval will necessarily return empty.
This page addresses only general trade import declaration / cross-border materials and multilingual retrieval / citation sources and tracing. When operations are handed over, which materials, actions, and requests sit at what authorization state cannot be inferred from retrieval or a form. Retrieval and forms are not authorization execution.