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Academic research chatbot

STATUS
PROTOTYPE
TIMELINE
JAN 2026
ROLE
Workflow design · Prompt engineering · Evaluation & testing
ARCHITECTURE
Retrieval constrained to a single source document, with a required citation format enforced on every response.
STACK
Zapier · Document RAG · Chicago style formatting

BUSINESS PROBLEM

A researcher needs answers grounded in one specific source, not a model's general recollection of the topic.

WHAT I BUILT

A chatbot constrained to a single academic source document by design, answering only from that source and formatting every response to Chicago Manual of Style citation standards.

RESULT

Demonstrates constrained retrieval with enforced citation formatting. Built against one source document.

MY ROLE

  • Workflow design
  • Prompt engineering
  • Evaluation & testing

HOW IT WORKS

  1. 01A question is answered only from the loaded source document; anything outside it returns a refusal rather than a guess.
  2. 02Every answer is formatted with a Chicago style citation pointing back into the source.

TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION

Zapier orchestration over a single-document retrieval step, with citation formatting enforced in the prompt.

LIMITATIONS

  • One source document. This is not a corpus and does not test retrieval at scale.
  • Citation formatting is prompt-enforced, so it should be checked before anything is quoted in real work.