Start with the information environment

Inventory repositories, document types, owners and freshness rules. Otherwise the index quickly fills with duplicates, drafts and obsolete versions.

Access to an answer must never exceed access to its source document.

Separate retrieval from answer generation

The retrieval layer selects permitted passages; the model answers only from that evidence. This separation lets teams measure retrieval coverage and explanation quality independently.

  • Metadata and versions
  • Role-based filtering
  • Source citations
  • Query and evaluation logs

Test with real questions

Build the evaluation set from common, difficult and adversarial employee questions. Test refusal when evidence is insufficient.

This turns search into a governed knowledge service rather than a model demonstration.