Designing secure retrieval systems for business data

How to think about permissions, evaluation, observability, and user trust in RAG.

This article is part of Xnovity’s research and product engineering notes. It outlines principles for building AI systems with clear user value, measurable reliability, and maintainable architecture.

Core principles

Start with a real workflow, design explicit evaluation criteria, isolate sensitive data, measure latency and cost, and create a feedback path for continuous improvement.