Clerks must audit which municipal-code section grounded a permit agent’s answer. What RAG design choice supports that audit?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
When you ask where a permit rule came from, the agent should point to the retrieved chunk, like a footnote in a staff report. Citations with chunk or section IDs make the answer auditable.
Full Explanation
Clerks auditing which municipal-code section grounded a permit agent’s answer need citation-aware RAG: each grounded answer should include retrieved chunk IDs or section identifiers so you can open the same code text the model used. Provenance makes generative assistance accountable rather than an opaque black box. Returning answers without provenance to keep them short blocks audits and undermines clerk trust. Hashing chunk IDs so clerks cannot map them back to the code deliberately breaks accountability. Having the model generate likely section numbers when retrieval is incomplete manufactures false citations, which is worse than admitting uncertainty or escalating. Exam caveat: citations show what was retrieved, not whether the generator used it faithfully, so faithfulness checks remain necessary. Practical check: sample production answers, resolve cited IDs to source text, and confirm clerks can reproduce the grounding path; fail builds that strip provenance from permit Q&A. Show citations in both the resident-visible answer and the clerk audit pane under the same request ID. Reject answers that cite section IDs absent from that turn’s retrieval set to catch hallucinated ordinance references before clerks see them.