Does the source support your AI's answer?

Syntalith can include this review in building or improving a Company Brain. The proposed scope covers answers to selected team questions, a view that connects individual statements to supporting passages, and a way to report incorrect links between them. The person responsible for the knowledge defines what a correct answer should include. The buyer can then assess whether employees receive a useful basis for action and can recognize missing information.

The condition that disappeared

Suppose an internal procedure says: "Materials may be sent to a customer after the account manager confirms that they contain the current product catalog." An employee asks whether they can send a presentation they have prepared. The assistant replies, "Yes, you can send the materials to the customer," with a link to that procedure. The document exists and covers sending materials. The answer leaves out the confirmation required first.

A useful answer preserves that condition: the account manager must confirm that the catalog is current before the materials are sent. The employee can open the cited passage beside that statement. The procedure itself does not say whether their presentation has already been checked. If the assistant has no available source confirming this, it should leave that point unresolved. The employee then knows what to ask the account manager rather than treating a link as permission to send.

A document, a passage, and a specific claim

A link to the beginning of a long handbook leaves the user with considerable work. They must find the relevant text and work out how it relates to the answer. A more useful view opens the passage with enough surrounding text to understand its conditions. It also shows which statement in the answer that passage supports.

A passage can be relevant without supporting the entire conclusion. In a longer answer, some claims may have support while others do not. The application should make that gap visible beside the relevant claim, so one valid citation does not make the whole answer appear substantiated.

An answer can also faithfully reflect a passage while leaving part of the question unanswered. If an employee asks about both preparing and sending materials, an explanation of sending alone leaves some of the work unclear. Acceptance therefore needs to address whether the sources support the information given and whether the answer covers what the employee needs.

Microsoft's guidance on evaluating RAG systems distinguishes the relevance of retrieved context, whether the generated response is grounded in that context, and its completeness against an expected answer. These are separate aspects of evaluation; finding relevant material does not settle the others.

What to review before accepting an assistant

Start with questions employees actually bring to the people responsible for procedures. Someone familiar with the work can identify a condition that must not disappear and the point where a document stops providing an answer. This helps agree on a review with the provider without requiring the buyer to understand technical metrics.

In the proposed project, Syntalith prepares a way to compare an answer with its supporting material so the team can discuss specific discrepancies. Reviewing agreed examples helps determine what needs improvement before wider use. Everyday work should not depend on the knowledge owner manually reviewing every response. Agree on subsequent reviews and employee involvement according to the importance of the work the assistant supports.

When a user spots a missing condition, the report should preserve the question, answer, and cited passage. The person investigating can then reconstruct the problem without asking for an account of the entire conversation. Together, we establish who corrects the connection in the application and who maintains the procedure itself. A model can assist with review, but its own assessment does not replace the team's agreed evaluation.

Accurate citation cannot repair a flawed procedure

Even a faithfully quoted document can contain an outdated or incorrect instruction. The knowledge owner remains responsible for what the company shares. Distinguishing these problems helps you commission the right work: improving answers and their source connections in the application or clarifying the underlying rule within the company.

Start by reviewing your current tool against your team's questions and checking whether adjustments to its settings or source display would be enough. A custom connection or interface makes sense when the existing tool cannot connect the materials you need or show the passage supporting a specific claim. Tell us about an answer whose source raised a doubt. Talk with us about Company Brain, or see Syntalith's pricing page.