What is Permission-aware retrieval?
Permission-aware retrieval applies each user's access rights at query time, so the system can only retrieve passages that user is already allowed to read. Filtering after generation is too late: the content has already entered the answer.
Also known as: access control RAG, document-level permissions AI.
The common failure is an index built with an admin service account. Every user then effectively queries every document, and an innocuous question surfaces salary bands or an unannounced acquisition. Permissions must be attached to passages at ingest and enforced inside the retrieval query.
How Uthereal handles it
Cortex carries source permissions into the index and enforces them per request, with an audit trail of what was retrieved for whom.
Related reading
Last updated 2026-09-18 · plain-text glossary for AI tools