Grounding is the contract between approved truth and generated output.
Grounding has two sides: the schemas that define how each department's knowledge is structured, and the retrieval engine that enforces those schemas when an AI agent makes a claim.
Part 1 — Schemas
Grounding Types
A Grounding Type is a department-specific schema that shapes what fields exist, what constraints apply, and how AI agents retrieve and generate from that domain. Each department gets its own type.
Product Marketing
Message House
Structures GTM strategy into deterministic nodes — pillars, proof points, personas, and objection handlers — so every sales email and battlecard cites the same approved claims.
- Core Value Prop
- Strategic Pillars
- Locked Proof Points
- Target Personas
- Approved Headlines
- Objection Handlers
Engineering
Engineering Spec
Keeps developer copilots and support bots aligned with actual API constraints, rate limits, versioning policies, and compliance requirements — not hallucinated guesses.
- API Constraints
- System SLAs
- Versioning Policy
- Security Requirements
- Developer Policies
- Deprecation Notices
Legal & Compliance
Policy Shield
Locks down legal disclaimers, privacy policies, SOC2 assertions, and pre-approved compliance responses so AI tools can never paraphrase a legal statement.
- Legal Disclaimers
- Privacy Policy Rules
- Compliance Assertions
- Approved Responses
- Jurisdiction Flags
- Liability Limits
Part 2 — Retrieval Engine
How Hybrid Grounding Works
Most AI tools fail because they rely solely on Vector Approximation. When a query is made, they find "similar" text but don't understand the relationship between a root policy and a specific claim.
Deterministic Graph Traversal
For verbatim match requirements (taglines, legal disclaimers, pricing caps), MsgStack traverses the knowledge graph to retrieve version-locked nodes. Zero paraphrasing allowed.
Semantic Vector Search
For exploratory queries, embedding-based semantic search finds relevant context across the broader canon, filtered by departmental domain boundaries.
Retrieval Fusion
The final grounding set synthesizes locked claims and relevant context, ranked by the Grounding Contract so the most authoritative truth always takes precedence.
"Isn't this just RAG with extra steps?"
Standard RAG
- • Finds similar text based on distance
- • Often retrieves irrelevant noise
- • Hallucinates when data is missing
- • Paraphrases critical legal terms
MsgStack Grounding
- • Traverses explicit relationship links
- • Filters by Governance State (Approved only)
- • Returns "Refusal" if truth is missing
- • Injects version-locked snippets verbatim
The Grounding Contract
The Grounding Contract is a set of retrieval rules that prevent "Creative Drift". When an AI agent makes a claim, MsgStack verifies it against the active Canon Domain.
Cite Sources
Every retrieved fact includes a deep-link back to the source entry in the Canon layer.
Never Invent
If a claim cannot be found in the Approved canon, the system signals a grounding failure.
Gated on Approval
By default, grounding only retrieves entries in the APPROVED or LOCKED states.
Strict Verbatim
High-risk entries are flagged for verbatim insertion, bypassing LLM summarization entirely.
Ready to ground your AI?
Connect the MsgStack MCP server and start querying your organizational canon layer today.