Retrieval Consistency

Inconsistent retrieval undermines trust faster than occasional error, because it makes the system unpredictable rather than merely imperfect. Variation arises from several sources — stochastic ranking, index changes, entitlement drift, cache behaviour — and diagnosing which requires knowing what was retrieved on each occasion. Systems that discard the retrieval set cannot distinguish a corpus change from a ranking change, and therefore cannot fix either with confidence.

Because the Interaction Log in Centralpoint retains what was retrieved for each execution, two answers to the same question are comparable at the level of inputs rather than outputs. Governed answers remove the variation entirely where consistency is itself the requirement, by serving a reviewed response rather than regenerating one.