Temporal Knowledge and Conflicting Sources
Store publication time, effective date, supersession status, and ingestion time. A page crawled today can still contain an obsolete policy. For historical questions, an older version may be correct; for current questions, use effective dates and authority rules. If conflict cannot be resolved, disclose it rather than blending rules into a false answer.
Implementation example
{
"publishedAt":"2026-09-15",
"effectiveFrom":"2026-10-01",
"supersededAt":null,
"ingestedAt":"2026-10-28T08:00:00Z"
}💡 These timestamps answer different questions; ingestion time is not the same as policy applicability.
Key Takeaways
- Inspect the relevant pipeline stage instead of guessing.
- Preserve source provenance, versions, and access scope.
- Measure quality on representative queries.
Knowledge Check
Which fields help decide if a policy applies today?