Retrieval, citations, and answers

Methods to understand

Establish whether retrieval found relevant evidence before generating an answer. Require abstention when evidence is absent, and link citations to actual retrieved passages. Apply permission filtering before retrieval.

Apply the method to a scenario

Query: "Does the project permit cross-department access to material?"
Record documents, sources, and answers; abstain without evidence.
Compare retrieval and citations before and after changes and record one failure.

Hands-on workshop

Build a minimal retrieval, evidence, and answer pipeline.

1. Start with an explainable lexical retrieval baseline before semantic retrieval.
2. Supply only actually retrieved, authorized passages as model context.
3. Allow citations only to current passages and abstain when no passage is found.

const evidence = hits.map(h => `[${h.id}] ${h.text}`).join("\n");
if (!hits.length) return { answer: "The current material provides insufficient evidence.", sources: [] };
const prompt = `Answer only from the following material; abstain when evidence is missing.\n${evidence}\nQuestion: ${question}`;
// Send the prompt to the server-side model API, then check that citation IDs belong to hits.

How to verify

Check answer correctness, citation existence, and whether the source supports the conclusion separately.

Practice task

Choose a case related to your work and practice "Retrieval, citations, and answers". Submit inputs, steps, results, and verification records.

• Explain the task goal and inputs
• Provide actual results or runnable deliverables
• Identify errors, limits, and verification evidence