Source layer
Document ownership, access, ingestion, parsing, metadata, versioning, freshness, deletion, and permissions.
Knowledge + workflow systems
Build knowledge workflows around trusted sources and accountable actions.
Generative AI can help people find, synthesize, classify, and route information. A useful system still needs source architecture, permissions, evaluation, workflow ownership, and a safe way to handle uncertainty.
Start with the information task
What must a person find, understand, decide, or move forward?
Define the user, approved sources, permissions, freshness, current search or document process, expected evidence, and the action that follows. Then decide whether retrieval, extraction, summarization, classification, generation, or conventional search is appropriate.
Potential system components
A knowledge assistant is more than a chat box.
Retrieval layer
Question understanding, search, ranking, filtering, context construction, and evidence trace.
Response layer
Answer construction, citations, uncertainty, abstention, structured outputs, and next actions.
Workflow layer
Human review, approvals, escalation, integration, logging, feedback, and exception handling.
Evaluation layer
Representative questions, retrieval relevance, claim support, citation quality, failures, latency, and cost.
Operating layer
Ownership, monitoring, source changes, prompt/model changes, incidents, support, and retirement.
Controlled automation
Do not give a workflow more autonomy than its evidence and controls support.
Start with bounded actions, explicit permissions, observable steps, human approval where consequences warrant it, and a reliable fallback path.
AssistFind, summarize, draft, or classify
RecommendPropose an action with evidence
ActOnly within approved scope and controls
Release evidence
What should be inspected.
- Source permissions
- Representative test set
- Citation support
- Abstention behavior
- Human escalation
- Monitoring owner
Specific connectors, cloud platforms, security controls, data classifications, regulated use, production support, and incident obligations must be verified during scoping. This page does not promise universal integrations or autonomous agents.
Have a document or knowledge bottleneck?