What metadata and provenance would you store in a RAG index?

Designs index records that support filtering, authorization, freshness, citations, diagnosis, and safe reprocessing.

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TL;DR

I store a stable chunk ID, document ID, source version, source URI or locator, section path, offsets, content hash, timestamps, language, and the parser, chunker, and embedding versions. Filterable metadata includes tenant, document type, status, and access principals where required. The searchable text and vector are never the only representation of a source.

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Overview
A useful RAG record needs enough identity and policy metadata to be governed after ingestion.
I store a stable chunk ID, document ID, source version, source URI or locator, section path, offsets, content hash, timestamps, language, and the parser, chunker, and embedding versions. Filterable metadata includes tenant, document type, status, and access principals where required. The searchable text and vector are never the only representation of a source.
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For a policy library, effective and expiration dates allow retrieval to exclude superseded material before ranking. Sensitivity and retention metadata control which provider and logs may receive the text, while source offsets support precise citations. I keep fields intentionally typed and filterable instead of packing operational data into an opaque metadata blob.

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Details

Storing only text and an embedding vector.
Using mutable filenames as the only identity.
Treating access metadata as display-only information.

What metadata and provenance would you store in a RAG index?

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