What the documents look like
A return-and-claim file rarely arrives in one language or one format. Customer email may describe a defect in English, Japanese or Spanish; a third-party laboratory issues the quality report in English; the return customs declaration and the insurer's claim record are commonly in Chinese. Establishing why a shipment came back requires lining up the email narrative, the inspection conclusion and the declared goods name, and the keywords in these three sources seldom match. Retrieval therefore needs cross-language semantic matching while keeping a full-text path for exact fields such as batch numbers, model codes and declaration numbers. Material arrives per case on an irregular schedule, and a closed file is later used to compare liability findings in similar cases.
Two features of this material shape the vector step directly. First, the same physical batch is described by different parties with different vocabulary, so a single index built from one language version of a return agreement will not answer a question phrased in another language. Second, the batch number and the declaration number are the only reliable anchors across the three sources, and those anchors are exactly the kind of content that semantic similarity handles poorly. The retrieval design has to serve both needs at once.
Constraints at the vector indexes step
Knowledge bases that are associated for retrieval must use the same vector model; check the actual model identifier and the input type before associating them. One original data block can carry several indexes, and the index content and the original content are checked separately. Building a Chinese summary index and an English summary index for the same return agreement block lets a Chinese question reach the English original, but the coverage and length of the two index sets have to be weighed against the case sample. Image retrieval depends on whether an image description or an image vector was generated at ingestion time; configuring a vision model only on the query side is not sufficient. The minimum relevance value for semantic retrieval is a filter threshold and does not perform permission or entity isolation. The same-model requirement for associated knowledge bases does not extend to external customs or insurance systems.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample. A case file contains the following two sentences from a return agreement: "The buyer received batch A-2271 on 10 March 2024 and, upon inspection, found twelve units with cracked housings. The parties agreed that the seller bears the return freight, and the return declaration must be completed by 5 April 2024." A draft handover sentence is under review: "The return declaration for this case has been completed, and the claim letter can be submitted to the insurer at the same time." The sample object is batch A-2271, the period is March to April 2024, and the authorization boundary is a material handover between the seller's after-sales desk and its customs desk. When judging the draft sentence, the agreement text states only the agreed deadline for the return declaration and does not state whether the declaration was submitted or completed. The word "completed" in the draft sentence is unsupported.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Setting or check relevant to this page | Relation to the sample |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Select one or more knowledge bases that use the same vector model | The return agreement, quality report and declaration must be ingested under the same model before they can be associated together |
| Search mode | Semantic retrieval, full-text retrieval or hybrid retrieval | Cross-language defect descriptions use semantic retrieval; an identifier such as A-2271 uses full-text retrieval |
| Index content | Build several index sets for one data block; check index and original content separately | A Chinese question reaching the English agreement depends on multi-index mapping |
| Image index | Check whether an image description or image vector was generated at ingestion | Whether an inspection photo can be retrieved depends on the ingestion-time index |
| Reference limit | A reference limit measured in tokens | The sample agreement is short and must be weighed together with the longer quality report block |
| Minimum relevance | A 0-1 threshold that takes effect only in semantic retrieval or with result reranking | Filters low-relevance fragments; it is not used to exclude unauthorized records |
Three common errors
- Extending the same-model requirement for associated retrieval to external systems. The error is requiring the customs system or the insurance claim system to use the same vector model. The input to check is the model identifier in the knowledge base configuration; compare whether the identifiers match across bases; the observable result is that a base with a different identifier is excluded from association, while the state of the external systems remains unknown.
- Treating a query-side image configuration as sufficient for image retrieval. The error is assuming that uploading an inspection photo guarantees a hit on an ingested image. The input to check is whether an image description or image vector was generated at ingestion; compare the query-side and ingestion-side configuration; the observable result is that when no index exists at ingestion, the image retrieval path produces no result for that image.
- Treating the completion status in the pending draft sentence as established fact. The error is inferring that the declaration was completed from the agreed deadline. The input to check is the draft sentence and the agreement text; compare the wording of the same subject, the same period and the same field; the observable result is that the original text does not state a completion status, and the sentence is judged unsupported.
How to verify the setup
- Cross-language semantic check. Input the Chinese question "who bears the return freight for the cracked housings in batch A-2271" from the sample; compare the returned reference text with the English or Chinese wording of the agreement; the condition is met when the reference content contains the freight-bearing clause. If the returned content contains only the batch number and no freight clause, record it as a miss and inspect index coverage and the minimum relevance setting.
- Exact identifier full-text check. Input "A-2271"; compare the returns from the full-text path and the semantic path; the condition is met when the full-text path returns a declaration or agreement block containing that identifier. A semantic-path miss on this identifier does not constitute a failure, because identifier queries are served first by full-text or hybrid retrieval.
- Status judgment check. Input the draft sentence "the return declaration for this case has been completed" together with the agreement text; compare the field "completed" against the original wording "must be completed by 5 April 2024"; the observable result is that the original text does not state that the declaration was submitted or completed, so the sentence remains pending verification and cannot serve as the basis for submitting the claim letter at the same time. An empty-result handover can be checked with the explicit paper input [] against the downstream design, without inferring that a fictional rule necessarily returns an empty array.
A model or index change is re-checked by running the same question set and comparing the cited original text; a vector score alone does not support a claim about retrieval quality. This page covers only the vector model and index step for cross-border material and multilingual retrieval in trade returns and claims. Whether material, an operation or a request is authorized at a given moment is a separate question, and retrieval or a form entry does not perform that authorization.