RAG Formation · Reference

Citation design and source fidelity

A standalone cheat sheet for learning and testing RAG quality on this site.

$ reference --status
▸ course RAG Formation
▸ mode standalone reference
▸ status Complete
● learn → test → verify

Reference sheet

The guided RAG Formation course content is complete; this reference is available for self-directed practice.

One-line rule

A filename is not a real citation if the source never supported the claim shown to the user.

Term	Meaning
Citation fidelity	The cited source actually contains or supports the claim.
Citation completeness	Every important claim has enough supporting evidence, especially in a multi-hop answer.
Citation identity	A stable document and chunk reference that a user can inspect or reproduce.

Need	Record	Don't claim
Baseline	Command, configuration, observed result	The baseline is a target.
Change	One hypothesis or decision	You can tell what caused the result when several things changed.
Metric	Track missing, extra, or misleading citations separately from answer correctness.	One metric tells you everything about quality.
Safety	A failure and a regression case	A fluent answer proves the system is reliable.

cd demo
python3 eval.py run --mode answer --workspace meridian_demo --tag lesson-11-citations

Artifact: A citation contract that maps claims to document and chunk/page identities, with clear deduplication rules.

Continue learning: Open the matching standalone lesson · Course roadmap