yau-plant-assistant/api/tools/retrieval.py
Claude b3e47506b0 Identify the procedure first, then withhold its steps
Two retrieval faults, both only visible once a real model ran.

find_procedure ranked a procedure's chunks by similarity to the question. For
"how do I lift the interlock on Pump 02" the closest chunks ARE the step list -
so the branch whose entire purpose is not reproducing steps was handing the
answer writer nothing but steps, while omitting the header block carrying the
title and the authorising role. The model was being asked for a title it had
never been shown, and returned "".

Once the document is identified, WHICH document it is settles what to send:
the header and the prerequisites, in document order, never the steps.
STEP_SECTION_RE is a second line behind ProceduralAnswer's instruction-language
check, not a replacement for it - the contract still rejects instruction
language whatever arrives here. This removes the temptation rather than relying
on catching it.

Separately, rerank did 0.75 * chunk.similarity where similarity is NULL for a
chunk ingested with --no-embed: `1 - (NULL <=> vec)` is NULL, so it raised
TypeError and 500'd the whole question rather than ranking that chunk last. It
now degrades to the lexical half - an unembedded chunk is still findable, just
not by meaning - and Chunk.similarity is typed honestly as float | None.

find_procedure_lexical takes the same identify-then-expand shape, so the stub
keeps testing the shape it always did.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-28 10:54:13 +10:00

365 lines
14 KiB
Python

"""Document retrieval over pg-ai / pgvector.
Two rules that are not optional and are implemented as defaults, not as
arguments a caller has to remember:
* superseded = FALSE is ALWAYS applied. Citing a withdrawn revision of a
procedure is worse than finding nothing. Including superseded revisions is
possible only through include_superseded, which exists for the ingest
tooling and is never set on the answer path.
* Every hit carries full citation metadata - document number, revision,
effective date, page, section. A chunk without them cannot be cited, and an
answer that cannot cite cannot be given.
Procedural retrieval is filtered to doc_type = 'procedure'. A manual describing
how an interlock works is not the procedure that authorises lifting it.
"""
from __future__ import annotations
import logging
import re
from dataclasses import dataclass, asdict
from datetime import date
from typing import Any, Literal
import psycopg
from psycopg.rows import dict_row
from config import settings
log = logging.getLogger("tools.retrieval")
DocType = Literal["procedure", "manual", "rationalisation", "design"]
@dataclass
class Chunk:
id: int
source_file: str
doc_type: str
doc_number: str | None
revision: str | None
effective_date: date | None
page: int | None
section_title: str | None
equipment_id: str | None
chunk_text: str
# None when the chunk has no embedding - see rerank().
similarity: float | None
# Added by migration 007; NULL on rows ingested before it, hence defaults.
doc_title: str | None = None
authorising_role: str | None = None
def citation(self) -> dict[str, Any]:
"""The citation dict a contract expects. Title falls back to the file
name, because a chunk with no title is still traceable to a document."""
return {
"doc_number": self.doc_number or self.source_file,
# doc_title is the document's own title from the confirmed header
# (migration 007). The fallbacks are for rows ingested before it.
"title": self.doc_title or self.section_title or self.source_file,
"revision": self.revision or "unknown",
"effective_date": self.effective_date,
"page": self.page,
"section_title": self.section_title,
"source_file": self.source_file,
"superseded": False,
}
def _connect() -> psycopg.Connection:
cfg = settings()
return psycopg.connect(
cfg.dsn(), row_factory=dict_row, application_name="ai-api", connect_timeout=5
)
def search(
query_embedding: list[float],
*,
top_k: int = 8,
doc_type: DocType | None = None,
equipment_id: str | None = None,
include_superseded: bool = False,
conn: psycopg.Connection | None = None,
) -> list[Chunk]:
"""Cosine top-k over doc_chunks, filtered and cited.
include_superseded exists for ingest verification only. Setting it on the
answer path is a defect - the contract will not stop you, because a
superseded citation raises at construction, but the failure will look like
a contract bug rather than the caller's mistake.
"""
owned = conn is None
conn = conn or _connect()
try:
where = [] if include_superseded else ["superseded = FALSE"]
params: dict[str, Any] = {"embedding": str(query_embedding), "k": top_k}
if doc_type:
where.append("doc_type = %(doc_type)s")
params["doc_type"] = doc_type
if equipment_id:
# Equipment-specific chunks first, but do not exclude general ones -
# the governing procedure for a pump is often written for the class.
where.append("(equipment_id = %(equipment_id)s OR equipment_id IS NULL)")
params["equipment_id"] = equipment_id
clause = f"WHERE {' AND '.join(where)}" if where else ""
with conn.cursor() as cur:
cur.execute(
f"""
SELECT id, source_file, doc_type, doc_number, revision,
effective_date, page, section_title, equipment_id,
chunk_text, doc_title, authorising_role,
1 - (embedding <=> %(embedding)s::vector) AS similarity
FROM doc_chunks
{clause}
ORDER BY embedding <=> %(embedding)s::vector
LIMIT %(k)s
""",
params,
)
return [Chunk(**row) for row in cur.fetchall()]
finally:
if owned:
conn.close()
def rerank(chunks: list[Chunk], question: str, *, top_n: int = 4) -> list[Chunk]:
"""Cheap lexical rerank over the vector hits.
Deliberately not a model call: this runs on every question and a reranking
model is a second inference per request for a marginal gain on a document
set this small. Revisit if retrieval accuracy is the eval failure, and fix
it here rather than by adding instructions to the prompt.
"""
terms = {t.lower().strip(".,?") for t in question.split() if len(t) > 3}
def score(chunk: Chunk) -> float:
text = chunk.chunk_text.lower()
overlap = sum(1 for t in terms if t in text)
lexical = overlap / max(len(terms), 1)
# similarity is NULL for a chunk ingested with --no-embed, and for any
# chunk whose embedding call failed. `1 - (NULL <=> vec)` is NULL, so
# this used to raise TypeError and 500 the whole question rather than
# rank that chunk last. Degrade to the lexical half instead: an
# unembedded chunk is still findable, just not by meaning.
similarity = chunk.similarity if chunk.similarity is not None else 0.0
return 0.75 * similarity + 0.25 * lexical
return sorted(chunks, key=score, reverse=True)[:top_n]
def find_procedure(
query_embedding: list[float],
question: str,
*,
equipment_id: str | None = None,
conn: psycopg.Connection | None = None,
) -> list[Chunk]:
"""Procedural path: procedures only, live revisions only.
The chunks that come back are for IDENTIFYING and QUOTING the procedure.
They are not raw material for reconstructing it - ProceduralAnswer's
contract rejects any response containing instruction language, whatever
these chunks happen to contain.
"""
hits = search(
query_embedding,
top_k=12,
doc_type="procedure",
equipment_id=equipment_id,
conn=conn,
)
best = rerank(hits, question, top_n=1)
if not best:
return []
return document_sections(best[0].source_file, conn=conn)
# Sections that ARE the instructions. Excluded from what the procedural branch
# retrieves - see document_sections().
STEP_SECTION_RE = re.compile(
r"\b(procedure|steps?|method|instructions?|execution|restoration|"
r"work\s+instruction)\b",
re.IGNORECASE,
)
def document_sections(
source_file: str,
*,
limit: int = 6,
conn: psycopg.Connection | None = None,
) -> list[Chunk]:
"""The identifying sections of ONE document, in document order.
Ranking a procedure's chunks by similarity to the question was the wrong
shape for this branch. It returned the three chunks that most resembled
"how do I lift the interlock" - which is the step list - and left out the
header block carrying the title and the authorising role, and often the
prerequisites too. So the model was asked for a title it had never been
shown (and returned "") while being handed the one section it must never
reproduce.
Once the document is identified, WHICH document it is settles what to send:
the header and the prerequisites, in the order they appear, never the
steps. STEP_SECTION_RE is a second line behind ProceduralAnswer's
instruction-language check, not a replacement for it - the contract still
rejects instruction language whatever arrives here.
Ordering by id is document order: ingest.py inserts sections in file order
in a single executemany, and replaces every chunk of a source_file in one
transaction, so ids within a document are monotonic in the document.
"""
owned = conn is None
conn = conn or _connect()
try:
with conn.cursor() as cur:
cur.execute(
"""
SELECT id, source_file, doc_type, doc_number, revision,
effective_date, page, section_title, equipment_id,
chunk_text, doc_title, authorising_role,
NULL::float AS similarity
FROM doc_chunks
WHERE source_file = %(source_file)s
AND superseded = FALSE
ORDER BY id
""",
{"source_file": source_file},
)
chunks = [Chunk(**row) for row in cur.fetchall()]
finally:
if owned:
conn.close()
kept = [c for c in chunks
if not STEP_SECTION_RE.search(c.section_title or "")]
dropped = len(chunks) - len(kept)
if dropped:
log.info("%s: withheld %d step section(s) from the procedural branch",
source_file, dropped)
return kept[:limit]
def lexical_search(
question: str,
*,
top_k: int = 8,
doc_type: DocType | None = None,
equipment_id: str | None = None,
conn: psycopg.Connection | None = None,
) -> list[Chunk]:
"""Full-text search over chunk_text. NO-LLM STUB MODE ONLY.
Embedding the question needs Azure OpenAI, so until that exists there is no
vector to search with. This finds chunks by words instead, which is a
genuinely different thing: it matches what the operator typed, not what
they meant. "The well is going to overflow" finds nothing here and would
find the spill procedure with embeddings.
Kept beside search() rather than hidden inside it, and never called on the
normal answer path, so that nobody can mistake a lexical hit for a semantic
one when reading a trace.
superseded = FALSE applies here exactly as it does in search(). There is no
include_superseded, because this function has one caller and that caller is
a demo.
"""
owned = conn is None
conn = conn or _connect()
try:
where = ["superseded = FALSE"]
params: dict[str, Any] = {"q": question, "k": top_k}
if doc_type:
where.append("doc_type = %(doc_type)s")
params["doc_type"] = doc_type
if equipment_id:
where.append("(equipment_id = %(equipment_id)s OR equipment_id IS NULL)")
params["equipment_id"] = equipment_id
clause = " AND ".join(where)
with conn.cursor() as cur:
cur.execute(
f"""
SELECT id, source_file, doc_type, doc_number, revision,
effective_date, page, section_title, equipment_id,
chunk_text, doc_title, authorising_role,
ts_rank(
to_tsvector('english', chunk_text),
plainto_tsquery('english', %(q)s)
) AS similarity
FROM doc_chunks
WHERE {clause}
AND to_tsvector('english', chunk_text)
@@ plainto_tsquery('english', %(q)s)
ORDER BY similarity DESC
LIMIT %(k)s
""",
params,
)
rows = cur.fetchall()
if not rows:
# plainto_tsquery ANDs every term, so one unmatched word returns
# nothing at all. Fall back to any-term matching before giving up,
# or a demo question phrased as a sentence never finds anything.
terms = [t.strip(".,?;:").lower() for t in question.split() if len(t) > 3]
if terms:
params["q"] = " | ".join(terms)
with conn.cursor() as cur:
cur.execute(
f"""
SELECT id, source_file, doc_type, doc_number, revision,
effective_date, page, section_title, equipment_id,
chunk_text, doc_title, authorising_role,
ts_rank(
to_tsvector('english', chunk_text),
to_tsquery('english', %(q)s)
) AS similarity
FROM doc_chunks
WHERE {clause}
AND to_tsvector('english', chunk_text)
@@ to_tsquery('english', %(q)s)
ORDER BY similarity DESC
LIMIT %(k)s
""",
params,
)
rows = cur.fetchall()
return [Chunk(**row) for row in rows]
finally:
if owned:
conn.close()
def find_procedure_lexical(
question: str,
*,
equipment_id: str | None = None,
conn: psycopg.Connection | None = None,
) -> list[Chunk]:
"""The find_procedure() shape, without an embedding. Stub mode only.
Identify-then-expand exactly as find_procedure() does, so the stub keeps
testing the same shape it always did. Only the identification step differs:
words rather than meaning.
"""
hits = lexical_search(
question,
top_k=12,
doc_type="procedure",
equipment_id=equipment_id,
conn=conn,
)
best = rerank(hits, question, top_n=1)
if not best:
return []
return document_sections(best[0].source_file, conn=conn)
def as_dicts(chunks: list[Chunk]) -> list[dict[str, Any]]:
return [asdict(c) for c in chunks]