The unit of value is a verified knowledge resolution
A useful enterprise knowledge service does more than generate fluent text. An authorized user receives an answer that is supported by applicable sources, includes authority and freshness context, exposes citations, handles conflicts and missing evidence, and provides a correction or human-escalation path.
Begin with a source and authority register
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Source and owner | Identifies who can establish meaning, approve use, correct content, and resolve conflicts. |
| Authority class and scope | Separates controlling policy or records from reviewed guidance, working material, and unverified content. |
| Classification and access | Defines who may retrieve the document, passage, row, field, metadata, and citation link. |
| Effective and review dates | Prevents recently ingested but not-yet-effective content from outranking an older controlling source. |
| Lifecycle state | Tracks approved, active, superseded, expired, quarantined, withdrawn, retained, and disposed content. |
| Citation permission | Controls whether passages, metadata, deep links, values, or only a source title may be shown. |
Authorization must occur before retrieval
Unauthorized content should not enter the candidate set, model context, cache, citation, or telemetry. Source-native checks remain authoritative where possible; indexes and caches must include tenant and entitlement context and react quickly to revocation. A prompt telling the model not to reveal content is not an access-control mechanism.
Support four answer states
Grounded
Material claims map to current authorized evidence and can be displayed with precise citations.
Partially grounded
Supported facts are shown; unsupported portions are omitted or explicitly bounded.
Conflicting evidence
The service presents the sources, scopes, dates, and conflict instead of choosing silently.
Insufficient evidence
The service abstains, returns useful search results, and offers escalation.
Evaluate retrieval and answer behavior separately
- Did the authorized retrieval set contain all required evidence?
- Did current and authoritative sources outrank obsolete or supporting material?
- Did each citation support the associated claim and resolve to the version used?
- Did the answer omit unsupported details and abstain when evidence was insufficient?
- Did access revocation, deletion, correction, and source supersession propagate to derivatives?
- Did the service reduce time to a correct resolution without increasing material error or disclosure?
Correction belongs to the source lifecycle
Feedback such as stale source, wrong authority, citation mismatch, access problem, or unsafe disclosure must route to the responsible owner. A correction is complete only when the authoritative source or approved metadata changes, affected derivatives and caches are invalidated, and regression tests are replayed.
