After Enterprise RAG: knowledge systems enter continuous evaluation

Retrieval accuracy is only the starting point. A knowledge system worth maintaining needs version control, permissions, evidence chains and freshness management.

01 / Why retrieval accuracy is no longer enough

Once RAG ships, teams learn that being able to retrieve is not the same as being able to maintain. Accuracy is a single-point metric. A real system has to answer harder questions: is this knowledge stale, is sensitive content isolated by role, can we trace an answer back to its source.

02 / Four capability layers that matter

• Version control — the knowledge base is versioned, and you can roll back to a previous state

• Permissions — sensitive knowledge is isolated by role, never mixed into public content

• Evidence chain — every answer traces back to a source document

• Freshness — stale entries are flagged automatically and refreshed on a schedule

03 / Next: continuous evaluation

Move evaluation off the offline benchmark and onto real tasks. Success rate, cost and failure modes all belong on the radar.

Reference: the Data & Knowledge section of the UWON technology landscape.