Designing Permission-Aware Retrieval

Private RAG systems must answer from the right sources, but only for the right people. Permission-aware retrieval checks access before content is used to generate an answer.

That means user identity, group membership, folder permissions, source ownership, and custom rules all matter during retrieval.

The Core Principle

If a user cannot open the source document, the AI assistant should not use it in an answer. This keeps search behavior aligned with the organization existing security model.