Retrieval and ranking
How Citely combines semantic and lexical search before an answer is written.
Question scope
A query is constrained to the selected document or collection and the current owner. This scope is applied before retrieved passages reach generation, preventing results from unrelated workspaces from becoming answer context.
Hybrid retrieval
Semantic vector search finds passages with related meaning, while lexical search rewards direct term matches. Combining both helps with natural-language questions as well as names, numbers and technical phrases that benefit from exact matching.
Reranking
Candidate passages are reranked against the question before the context is assembled. This smaller ordered set gives the answer model the most relevant available evidence and reduces unrelated context.
Limits are a result
Retrieval can return weak or absent evidence. Citely treats that as a supported outcome. The answer path can report insufficient evidence instead of turning a low-confidence match into a document-wide conclusion.