Query-Aware Source-Risk Triage for Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Abstract

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines may omit a source's material relationship to the query. We study a pre-generation triage layer that treats this relationship as query dependent. The method routes canonical query families for enhanced review and assigns retrieved pages to pass, contextualize, exclude, or review. It combines a four-dimension page score, rank-discounted family aggregation, intent-preserving query mutations, and a family-held-out router. A single-coded pilot of 200 real URLs supplies provisional calibration anchors; a 20,000-row scenario with synthetic domain identifiers supports controlled workload analysis. An oracle page gate defines a risk-coverage target for a future learned classifier. The evaluation shows why page-level frequency cannot substitute for family-level exposure and quantifies how calibration changes scenario activation. Annotation reliability remains unmeasured, and synthetic rankings omit real retrieval dynamics. The result is an auditable triage method and validation plan, not an estimate of deployed review workload, live-Web prevalence, or downstream answer-quality gains.