What the documents look like
Franchise supervision materials center on headquarters oversight of how franchisees carry out standards. Store visit forms record display, ordering and rectification items. Franchise contracts set out the rights, obligations and authorization boundaries of both parties. Rectification notices show how a problem was found and how follow-up stands. Display standards provide the requirements that can be checked against. These materials sit together in retrieval, and their lengths differ widely: contract clauses run long, rectification notices run short, and store visit form entries are finely broken up. The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that use the same vector model. Search operates at the knowledge base as the smallest unit, while a collection only classifies data and does not affect search results. Questions raised during operations permission and handover management often concern what state a given material is currently in. Retrieval only locates candidate content; judging the state still requires returning to the source text.
Constraints at the retrieval step
The retrieval step has to distinguish the semantic character of different materials. Clause numbers, sequence numbers and dates in a franchise contract are precise lookup targets, so full-text search or hybrid search fits better. Natural-language descriptions in store visit forms suit semantic search. The minimum relevance value takes effect only in semantic search or when result reranking is used; it is a filter threshold and does not perform permission or entity isolation. The citation limit is measured in tokens, and materials of uneven length need their content completeness checked in practice. Question optimization performs coreference resolution and question expansion, calls the model an extra time, and may change the subject of the question, so the original question and the optimized question need comparison. Hybrid search merges multiple result paths through RRF. Reranking needs a model and is enabled according to settings. Image retrieval needs image input and model capability support. When a search returns nothing, the citation content is output as an array and its length can be 0; the downstream path still runs.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample: a franchise contract text states that "Party A authorizes Party B to use the brand mark at the XX Road store, with an authorization period from January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2024." A rectification notice states that "the store's March 2024 display inspection found missing cold cabinet temperature records, and rectification is required by April 10, 2024." A handover request awaiting determination reads: "Please confirm that the store currently still holds authorization to use the brand mark, and process the supervisor handover." This request mixes the contract period found by retrieval with processing the handover. Whether the contract period was extended and whether the handover was approved are both unstated in the source text.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Hypothetical trial starting point for this exercise | Reason for the choice and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Store visit form base, franchise contract base, rectification notice base, display standard base | The four bases can be associated together only if they use the same vector model; check the vector model identifier one by one and exclude any that does not match |
| Search mode | Hybrid search | Contract number questions need full-text hits while store visit descriptions need semantic hits; use the same test question to compare candidate differences across semantic, full-text and hybrid modes |
| Citation limit | Hypothetical trial starting point of 2000 tokens for this exercise | Contract clauses are long and a complete clause needs to fit; compare against a shorter rectification notice and observe whether content is truncated |
| Minimum relevance | Hypothetical trial starting point of 0.3 for this exercise | First label relevant and irrelevant samples, then compare whether irrelevant fragments are filtered at different thresholds; this value takes effect only in semantic search or result reranking |
| Question optimization | Enabled | Used for coreference resolution and question expansion; compare the original question with the optimized question and check whether the subject was altered |
| Result reranking | Enabled according to settings | A rerank model is required; compare candidate ordering before and after enabling, and the rerank score can be used for filtering |
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieved contract clause as a currently valid authorization. In the hypothetical sample the contract period ends December 31, 2024. Retrieving that clause only shows the source text records it that way. Whether it was renewed and whether it remains valid are unstated. Check action: input the contract source text, compare the retrieval result with the source wording, and observe whether a renewal or validity conclusion appears that the source does not contain.
- Treating a handover request pending review as already approved and executed. In the hypothetical sample the handover request is awaiting determination and no approval result is recorded. Check action: input the request text, compare the "please confirm" wording in the request with any approval record, and observe whether an approval field or signature record exists; when missing, record it as pending verification.
- Treating minimum relevance as a permission filter. In the hypothetical sample the supervisor is authorized only to view materials for stores under their jurisdiction, while minimum relevance only filters low-relevance results. Check action: input a question about a store in another region, compare the returned content with the authorized scope, and observe whether materials for out-of-scope stores appear; this parameter does not perform entity isolation.
How to verify the setup
- For the contract source text in the hypothetical sample, input "the store's brand mark authorization period," compare the returned content with the two source sentences, and observe whether the authorization subject, object and start and end dates are returned completely. If the returned content contains a renewal conclusion the source does not state, the condition is not met.
- For the rectification notice in the hypothetical sample, input "cold cabinet temperature record rectification requirement," compare the returned content with the notice source text, and observe whether the rectification item and deadline are returned. If the returned content presents the rectification status as completed while the source only contains a requirement, the condition is not met.
- For the handover request in the hypothetical sample, input the request text, compare the returned content with the request source text, and observe whether "please confirm" is presented as pending verification. If the returned content directly presents it as approved or executed, the condition is not met. For the empty-result case, a clearly written paper input of [] can be used to check the downstream design; this does not claim that a search of a fictional rule necessarily returns [].