Why it matters
Provenance records origin: who authored a fact, from which system, under which approval. When answers face audit, provenance beats plausible tone.
How it works
Store source system IDs, author, approval timestamp, and transformation history when content passes through mirrors or exports.
Example
Nintendo provenance shows a billing answer originated from Help Center article v14 mirrored from Refund Policy v8 approved by legal on March 3.
Common mistakes
- 1Losing author metadata during PDF extraction
- 2Mirrors without link back to authoritative system of record
- 3Provenance stored outside retrieval audit logs
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