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Beginner45-75 minmetadata schemadocument inventorysource policy

Design a knowledge base for RAG

Information architecture for reliable retrieval.

Prerequisites

  • Document collection
  • Owner or subject expert
  • Basic metadata fields

Step-by-step tutorial

Step 1

Inventory sources

List documents, owners, dates, formats, authority, and access rules.

  • Identify owners
  • Mark authoritative sources
  • Remove duplicates
  • Flag sensitive content

Step 2

Design metadata

Metadata lets retrieval respect time, authority, language, jurisdiction, and access rights.

  • Date
  • department
  • language
  • document type
  • access label

Step 3

Plan maintenance

A RAG system becomes stale unless source updates and removals are routine.

  • Assign owner
  • Set refresh cadence
  • Track deprecations
  • Retest after updates

Next steps

  • Create a metadata template
  • Test metadata filters
  • Write an editorial source policy