RAG interview question · Most asked
How do you make RAG answers grounded and verifiable?
Summary
Instruct the model to answer only from the provided documents and to say when they don't contain the answer, require a source and an exact quote (or use a citations feature) for each claim, verify the quotes in code, and show users only verified citations.
Longer Answer
Retrieved text doesn't override what the model learned in training; frequently seen but outdated facts can leak into answers. Make "I can't find that" an acceptable and measured outcome.
Key Points
- Answer only from documents.
- Per-claim citations with quotes.
- Verify in code.
- 'Not found' is valid.
Deep dive: Grounded Answers and Verified Citations
More most-asked RAG questions
- RAG leaf: Explain query rewriting and multi-query retrieval.
- Why use hybrid search in RAG, and how do you combine the results?
- How do you enforce permissions and tenant isolation in RAG?
- How do you evaluate a RAG system?
- RAG leaf: How do you measure retrieval quality independently of generation?
- RAG leaf: How do you prevent prompt injection via retrieved documents?
- How do you choose a chunking strategy for RAG?
- RAG leaf: How do you evaluate faithfulness of answers?