AI Lab / AI Source Boundaries
RAG Source Boundary Checklist
A builder checklist for retrieval systems: corpus scope, freshness, citations, refusal cases, and when the answer needs a human handoff.
Resource
Use case, then evidence.
A checklist for building AI search or RAG systems that know which sources they are allowed to trust.
- Freshness
- active / reviewed 2026-08-14
- Sources
- 1 attached now; source plan has 3 checks.
- Next useful action
- Create checklist table
The Boundary
A retrieval app is a source product before it is a model product. The useful question is not only what the model can answer; it is which documents get authority, which documents are stale, and which missing answer gets an honest refusal.
The checklist keeps five things visible: corpus boundary, chunking reason, citation rule, freshness window, and escalation path.
- corpus scope
- source rank
- freshness
- citation contract
- refusal
- human handoff
Good Failure Cases
Test with missing documents, conflicting sources, stale policy pages, duplicated paragraphs, hostile retrieved text, and questions that ask for decisions outside the system boundary.
A RAG demo that only answers happy-path questions is a search box wearing a blazer.