Definition
In RAG and Agentic systems, transparency is the property of providing auditable traces of the internal reasoning chain, including specific source document citations, retrieval scores, and intermediate LLM 'thought' logs. It allows for the verification of how an answer was derived, balancing the trade-off between increased system latency/storage for logs and the necessity for debugging and user trust.
Refers to technical 'explainability' and 'traceability' rather than organizational or optical clarity.
"An open-kitchen restaurant where patrons can see the exact ingredients used and every step of the chef's preparation process."
- Traceability(Component)
- Citations(Component)
- Chain-of-Thought(Prerequisite)
- Interpretability(Prerequisite)
Conceptual Overview
In RAG and Agentic systems, transparency is the property of providing auditable traces of the internal reasoning chain, including specific source document citations, retrieval scores, and intermediate LLM 'thought' logs. It allows for the verification of how an answer was derived, balancing the trade-off between increased system latency/storage for logs and the necessity for debugging and user trust.
Disambiguation
Refers to technical 'explainability' and 'traceability' rather than organizational or optical clarity.
Visual Analog
An open-kitchen restaurant where patrons can see the exact ingredients used and every step of the chef's preparation process.