Grounded answers
When does external evidence improve the answer enough to justify a retrieval system?
Decide when retrieval is justified, then verify that sources are current, permitted, and actually support each important answer claim.
DECISION BRANCH
Do not begin with the tool name.
- ASK FIRST↓
Is the missing piece a fact, a standard, or model capability?
- IF↓
The result is verifiable and the failure cost is bounded, expand carefully.
- OTHERWISE✓
Narrow the action, keep the human handoff, and preserve recovery.
WORKED CASE
Which policy version should a multi-region leave assistant cite?
Employees encounter a group handbook, regional supplements, and a newly issued leave notice. Keywords overlap while region, effective date, and access rights differ.
Put every PDF in a vector database and call the answer grounded whenever it includes a link.
Establish authoritative sources and coverage before choosing retrieval. Results carry region, version, effective date, and permission, while important claims map to passages that actually support them.
Test known answers, expired policy, cross-region conflicts, and unauthorized questions together. Claims are supported, superseded material does not win, and restricted content does not leak.
ENTRY & EXIT SIGNALS
Know when to enter—and when the decision is good enough to leave.
A topic is not an endless knowledge directory. Entry signals tell you whether the problem belongs at this layer. Exit signals decide whether to continue instead of substituting time spent reading for work completed.
- Consequential answers need citations or traceable support
- Sources conflict by region, version, or permission
- A RAG build is proposed without maintenance ownership
- Authoritative sources, coverage, and owners are registered
- Important claims are actually supported by current passages
- Expired, conflicting, and unauthorized questions stop safely
2 PRACTICES
Build the judgment, make the artifact, then review it with real cases.
BOUNDARY
What this topic page will not do
A grounded answer can still be stale, conflicted, or misread. Source governance, citation checks, and human escalation remain separate controls.