Design answers that can show their evidence
Decide whether retrieval is necessary, then test source support, version, access, freshness, and no-answer behavior before building a maintenance-heavy system.
BEFORE LESSON ONE
Bring real material so the course produces a real result.
- 01 · WHO IT IS FOR
- For knowledge assistants, policy search, support systems, and internal research workflows.
- 02 · WHAT TO BRING
- Bring a small source set and five questions with known answers.
- 03 · HOW TO FINISH
- A reviewer can trace every important answer claim to a current, permitted source.
WHEN THIS COURSE FITS
Start here when any of these situations is true.
You do not need a level label. Enter when the work shows one of these signals, bring real material, and use course acceptance to decide when you are done.
- 01✓
Answers must show where their support comes from
Policies, research, or product facts influence decisions and readers must inspect consequential claims.
- 02✓
Sources differ by version, region, or permission
The same query can retrieve expired policy, another region’s rule, or restricted material.
- 03✓
The team is considering a RAG investment
You need to decide whether retrieval is warranted and define ownership, citation support, and freshness tests.
COURSE MILESTONES
Every stage leaves a change someone else can review.
These milestones are not another reading list. They show whether the lessons form one piece of work: real material at the start, connected artifacts in the middle, and evidence another person can reproduce at the finish.
- 01 BEFORE↓
Create a small authoritative source set a person can verify.
Bring five questions with known answers. Record source owner, scope, version, effective date, and access permission. You need known truth before judging whether retrieval helps.
Starting evidence: every question and answer maps to a valid supporting passage. - 02 MIDPOINT↓
Make the RAG investment decision before designing citation checks.
Compare knowledge change, corpus size, citation need, access rules, and maintenance ownership. Continue into retrieval design only when those conditions justify it.
Midpoint evidence: both build and do-not-build decisions have explicit conditions, not technical preference. - 03 FINISH✓
Challenge answers with conflicting, expired, and unauthorized material.
Ask a reviewer to inspect each consequential claim, confirming that the passage supports it, the version is current, and retrieval has not exposed restricted content.
Completion evidence: bad sources do not win and uncertain answers stop for review.
- 01✓LESSON 1
Decide whether RAG is worth building
Compare knowledge volatility, source volume, citation needs, access rules, and maintenance cost before adding retrieval.
LESSON OUTPUT · investment gateNot completeOpen lesson → - 02✓LESSON 2
Test citations for support and freshness
Audit whether each important claim is supported by the cited passage, uses the right version, and survives a freshness check.
LESSON OUTPUT · citation auditNot completeOpen lesson →
COURSE ACCEPTANCE
A reviewer can trace every important answer claim to a current, permitted source.
Reading is not the finish line. Assemble the lesson outputs and ask another person to review them against the standard above.