sboghossian RAG — Personal Knowledge
What it does
This tool performs retrieval-augmented generation against an individual user's personal knowledge store — a per-user embedding store that holds documents the user has personally uploaded, notes they have taken, and matter-linked files they have associated with their account.
This is distinct from:
- Firm KB ([[tool-rag-firm-knowledge]]): shared across the whole tenant, curated as authoritative precedents — higher precedence
- Public legal corpus ([[tool-rag-public-legal-corpus]]): indexed public statutes and judgments — lowest precedence
Personal KB is for the user's own working documents: a draft they uploaded for review, a research note they saved from a previous session, a client briefing document they want to refer back to.
When to invoke
Explicit signals
- "Earlier I uploaded a document about..."
- "I saved a note on force majeure clauses last week"
- "Use the draft I uploaded"
- "The term sheet I gave you earlier"
Implicit signals
- User refers to "my document", "my draft", "my notes"
- The query context suggests a personal upload is relevant (user mentioned uploading something during onboarding or in a prior turn)
Do not invoke
- When the firm-level KB clearly covers the request (firm KB takes precedence)
- For general legal knowledge (no personal context is needed)
- For first-session users who have not uploaded anything
Storage architecture
- Each user has a dedicated per-user embedding store, isolated from other users in the same tenant
- The user's store is also isolated from the tenant-level firm KB — documents uploaded to personal KB do not automatically become firm KB documents
- Promotion to firm KB: a user with the appropriate permission level (partner, knowledge manager) can explicitly promote a personal document to the firm KB, at which point it enters the firm ingest pipeline
Retrieval rules
Isolation
Every query is scoped to:
tenant_id— hard constraint (same as firm KB)user_id— hard constraint (personal documents are user-private)
A user cannot retrieve another user's personal documents, even within the same tenant, unless the document has been explicitly shared.
Filter sequence
1. tenant_id + user_id (both mandatory)
2. document_type (if specified)
3. matter_id (if matter context is active)
4. date range (if user specifies "something from last month")
5. Embedding similarity (top-K, threshold 0.72)
Precedence
If both personal KB and firm KB return results for the same query:
- Firm KB results are presented first (authoritative precedent)
- Personal KB results are presented as "also in your personal documents"
- The user decides which to use
Document lifecycle
| Stage | Action |
|---|---|
| Upload | User uploads PDF/DOCX → [[tool-pdf-extractor]] → embedded → stored in personal store |
| Session reference | Tool retrieves relevant passages during active session |
| Retention | Documents retained per tenant data-retention policy (default: 1 year) |
| Deletion | User can delete individual documents from their personal store |
| Promotion | With appropriate permission: promote to firm KB via ingest pipeline |
Privacy and security
- Personal documents are user-private by default; not accessible to firm administrators without explicit consent except for audit/compliance purposes
- Documents containing PII should be tagged at upload; [[safety-pii-redaction-before-rag]] applies before LLM processing
- For users on shared devices or shared sessions, remind them to log out — personal KB is tied to the session user
- Tenants in regulated industries (banks, law firms subject to attorney-client privilege) should configure the retention and sharing policy to comply with data protection obligations
Citations
Retrieved personal KB passages are cited as:
[Personal KB: <filename> §<section>]- Example:
[Personal KB: Acme-draft-MSA-v2.docx §14.2]
Output schema
{
"results": [
{
"documentName": "Acme-draft-MSA-v2.docx",
"documentType": "MSA",
"section": "14.2",
"text": "...",
"similarity": 0.87,
"uploadedAt": "2026-05-10",
"userId": "user-xyz",
"citation": "[Personal KB: Acme-draft-MSA-v2.docx §14.2]"
}
],
"totalResults": 2,
"tenantId": "tenant-xyz",
"userId": "user-xyz",
"queryTimestamp": "2026-05-14T10:00:00Z"
}
Related skills
- [[tool-rag-firm-knowledge]] — firm-wide knowledge base; higher precedence; shared across tenant
- [[tool-rag-public-legal-corpus]] — public legal corpus; lowest precedence; jurisdictionally indexed
- [[tool-pdf-extractor]] — PDF text extraction that feeds documents into this store
- [[safety-client-confidentiality-cross-tenant]] — cross-tenant isolation policy