A no-support retrieval result should abstain or mark unknown. Honesty note: simplified toy corpus; jurisdictions vary; the pinned first step states the as-of date; not legal advice; retrieval points to sources and does not answer the legal question.
highlighted = computed this step
Retrieval honesty note
Honesty note: simplified toy corpus; jurisdictions vary; as of June 24, 2026; not legal advice; retrieval points to sources and does not answer the legal question.
toy corpus as of June24,2026
Require cited support
The stated process is cite or abstain. If the toy corpus has no supporting record, the model marks an abstention path.
no support→abstain
Example unsupported query
The example query is patent venue. The corpus records do not contain matching support for that query.
support rows=0
The model refuses the unsupported path
When the corpus has 0 supporting rows, the model marks abstain or unknown instead of generating an unsupported response.
support rows=0,abstain flag=1
Diagram note
The diagram shows every corpus row with zero support for the query, then displays the abstain flag.
zero support is visible
Jurisdiction: US; as of 2026-06-24; not legal advice; Code encodes the stated-rule interpretation.
Summary
The safe retrieval behavior is to show the lack of support and hand off instead of inventing a cited answer.