What the documents look like
Brand-owned stores are staffed and accounted for directly by the brand, so operations authority sits with the brand retail company, store managers and regional managers rather than being governed through a franchise contract. The materials that move through handover and traceability are daily sales reports, shift schedules, display photos and inventory transfer orders. Because missed sales targets, broken size runs and store performance deductions are the practical consequences, each handover item needs its subject, object, status and validity scope checked line by line. Source systems include the POS system, member CRM, ERP inventory and store inspections. This page uses the daily or per-order basis only when checking how current a document is; it does not extend that into batch, real-time or transaction-triggered mechanisms.
A citation is a pointer to source material, not a statement that an action was authorized or carried out. A request that is still awaiting approval, an unsigned transfer order and a completed execution are three different facts, and the tracing step exists to keep them apart.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that use the same vector model, and it outputs cited content as an array whose length may be zero. A zero-length array still completes the output path, so an empty result is not by itself a workflow error. The citation cap is controlled in tokens rather than by item count, and the minimum relevance value is a filter threshold that takes effect only under semantic retrieval or result re-ranking. Re-ranking requires a ReRank model and must be enabled according to the settings; image retrieval requires image input and the corresponding model capability. The overall retrieval flow lists several optional paths, and the presence of a path in the diagram does not mean every request executes it.
Retrieval is not authorization. A relevance score is not a category, entity or permission filter, and it does not exclude unrelated businesses or unauthorized records. RRF is the fusion step that combines multiple retrieval channels; it is not an on/off switch. Whether a cited source is actually adopted still depends on review against the valid version of the document.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample. Two sentences of source material are supplied for checking. First sentence: "On 10 March 2025, store manager Li submitted the 9 March daily sales report; the report amount matches the POS summary, and the status is pending regional manager review." Second sentence: "On the same day, Li initiated an inventory transfer request to move 12 units of the M-size outerwear from store A to store B; the request status is pending approval and has not been signed by the regional manager." Draft sentence to be judged: "The transfer has been executed and store A inventory has been deducted." The fields needed for judgment are subject, object, date, quantity, status and authorization boundary. In the sample the request status is pending approval with no signature, and execution and deduction are not stated.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration or check item | Hypothetical starting point for this exercise | Reason for the choice and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Select two knowledge bases that use the same vector model | The documentation states that only knowledge bases with the same vector model can be associated together; verify the identifier first and exclude those that do not match |
| Citation cap | Set to a number of tokens as the starting point for this exercise | The cap is documented in tokens; compare against candidate chunk length and do not convert it into an item count |
| Minimum relevance | Set to a value between 0 and 1 as the starting point for this exercise | It takes effect only under semantic retrieval or result re-ranking; compare against the re-ranking score |
| Search result handoff | The citation array length is allowed to be zero | Use a paper input of an empty array to check the downstream design; do not claim that a fictional rule must return an empty result |
| Document currency check | Use the current version and a historical version of the document | Check the source version and validity scope; adoption still depends on review against the valid version |
| Re-ranking and image retrieval | Enable according to model capability and settings | Re-ranking requires a ReRank model; the image path requires image input and model capability |
Three common errors
- Treating a pending inventory transfer request as executed. The input is the sample text "request status is pending approval and has not been signed by the regional manager"; the comparison is between the status and signature fields and the draft wording; the observable result is that the execution and deduction fields remain absent.
- Treating a retrieval score as authorization or entity isolation. The input is the minimum relevance value together with the retrieval results; the comparison is against the authorization fields and the business subject; the observable result is that changing the score does not change any authorization state.
- Treating an empty citation array as a workflow failure. The input is a paper citation array with zero length; the comparison is against the node output path; the observable result is that the path completes without an error assertion.
How to verify the setup
- Input the sample source sentences and the draft sentence, then compare "pending approval, unsigned" against "executed, deducted". The observable result is that the draft sentence is not supported and the execution fields remain missing. A pending request is not an approval, and an unsigned termination is not a completed termination.
- Input the two knowledge base identifiers and compare whether their vector models are the same. The observable result is that matching bases may be associated together while non-matching ones are excluded and recorded; do not run a cross-model retrieval to compare missed recalls.
- Input a paper citation array with zero length and compare it against the downstream handoff design. The observable result is that the path completes, without claiming that a fictional rule must return an empty array or that an unrelated query must return nothing.
Where a document field is not provided, it remains unknown. Where only stage-related evidence exists, the finding is unsupported or pending verification rather than a contradiction. Missing evidence stays missing.