Grounded Generation in Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Lessons in this section

1. Grounded Prompting

   Writing prompts that keep answers tied to the sources: grounding rules, exact refusals, temperature 0 and seeds, XML delimiters, system vs user placement, and defending against injection hidden in chunks.

2. Citation Tracing

   Linking every claim to its source and checking it: chunk ids, sections and pages, the citation-first pattern, claim verification, structured citation schemas, fake and missing citations, and streaming with citations.

3. Unanswerable Queries

   Knowing when not to answer: detecting missing evidence, refusal triggers, surfacing conflicting sources, avoiding speculation and false premises, partly answerable questions, and edge-case test suites.