TrailRAG

Compliance audit layer for RAG pipelines built on rag_control. Regulators in EU AI Act / GDPR / HIPAA-regulated industries need more than a response — they need to know which document, which page, and which model version produced it. TrailRAG intercepts every retrieval call, traces each chunk to its source, and writes an immutable audit record before returning the result.

The Problem

"The AI referenced this document" is not sufficient. Regulators need: the AI extracted $2.5M from page 7, paragraph 3 of insurance_policy_v2.pdf, version 2026-01-15, at 04:32:59 UTC, by user analyst_001.

Starting August 2026, EU AI Act enforcement makes this non-negotiable:

• Art. 30 — High-risk AI systems must log every inference: input, output, retrieved sources, model identity, timestamp, and the user who triggered it.
• GDPR Art. 30 — Records of processing activities must identify the data subject, legal basis, and retention period for every automated decision.
• HIPAA §164.312(b) — Audit controls must record activity in systems that touch PHI, including AI-generated responses citing medical records.

Quick Start

pip install trailrag

from trailrag import TrailRAGEngine

engine = TrailRAGEngine(
    base_engine=your_rag_control_engine,
    jurisdiction="GDPR",                    # sets retention period automatically
    db_url="postgresql://user:pw@host/db",  # or "sqlite:///audit.db" for dev
)

result = engine.run(query="What is the fire coverage limit?", user_context=ctx)
print(result.audit_id)       # 01KNZZDS0161Z4VEWVVV0REP0A
print(result.chunk_records)  # [{chunk_id, doc_id, page_number, score, ...}, ...]

What Gets Logged

{
  "audit_id":        "01KNZZDS0161Z4VEWVVV0REP0A",
  "timestamp_utc":   "2026-04-12T04:32:59Z",
  "user_id":         "analyst_001",
  "jurisdiction":    "GDPR",
  "retention_until": "2026-10-09T04:32:59Z",
  "model_name":      "gpt-4o",
  "prompt_hash":     "880d6f35...",
  "query_text":      "What is the fire coverage limit?",
  "retrieved_chunks": [
    {
      "doc_id":           "insurance_policy_v2.pdf",
      "doc_version":      "2026-01-15",
      "page_number":      7,
      "similarity_score": 0.91,
      "retrieval_rank":   1
    }
  ],
  "response_hash":        "7eb675c8...",
  "total_tokens":         252,
  "retrieval_latency_ms": 13.4,
  "total_latency_ms":     161.2
}

Audit records are append-only. The only deletion path is purge_expired(), which removes records past their retention_until. store.delete() always raises ComplianceViolationError.

Compliance Coverage

Regulation	Key Requirement	TrailRAG Field
EU AI Act Art. 30	Decision traceability per inference	retrieved_chunks → page_number, doc_id, similarity_score
GDPR Art. 30	Records of processing activities	user_id, timestamp_utc, retention_until
HIPAA §164.312(b)	Audit controls for PHI systems	audit_id + append-only store
BASEL III	Credit risk model documentation	model_version, prompt_hash, temperature

Retention is set automatically: GDPR → 180 days, HIPAA → 6 years, EU AI Act → 10 years, SOC 2 → 1 year.

GDPR Subject Access Requests (Art. 15)

records = store.get_by_user("analyst_001", from_date=start, to_date=end)
store.export_json(audit_id, "/tmp/record_for_dpa.json")

Self-hosting (Docker)

The fastest way to run the compliance dashboard on your own infrastructure.

Prerequisites

• Docker ≥ 24 and Docker Compose ≥ 2

1 — Clone and configure

git clone https://github.com/LeQuocAnh123/RAG_control.git
cd RAG_control

Create a .env file in the project root (never commit this file):

# Required — set a strong random value; used for POST /api/purge
TRAILRAG_API_KEY=change-me-to-a-long-random-secret

# Optional — defaults shown below
TRAILRAG_DB_URL=sqlite:////data/audit.db
TRAILRAG_CORS_ORIGINS=*

2 — Build and start

docker compose up -d --build

3 — Open the dashboard

http://localhost:8080/dashboard

The API docs (OpenAPI / Swagger) are at http://localhost:8080/api/docs.

4 — Verify health

curl http://localhost:8080/health
# {"status": "ok", "total_records": 0}

Persistent storage

Audit records are stored in a Docker named volume (trailrag_data) mounted at /data inside the container. Data survives container restarts and upgrades.

To back up:

docker run --rm -v trailrag_data:/data -v $(pwd):/backup busybox \
  tar czf /backup/trailrag_backup_$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz /data

Switching to PostgreSQL

Set TRAILRAG_DB_URL in your .env:

TRAILRAG_DB_URL=postgresql://user:password@postgres_host:5432/trailrag

TrailRAG will create the audit_log table automatically on first start.

Purging expired records

# Dry run — count eligible records
curl -X POST "http://localhost:8080/api/purge?dry_run=true" \
     -H "X-TrailRAG-Key: $TRAILRAG_API_KEY"

# Execute purge
curl -X POST "http://localhost:8080/api/purge" \
     -H "X-TrailRAG-Key: $TRAILRAG_API_KEY"

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Built On

• rag_control — runtime governance, RBAC, policy enforcement
• SQLAlchemy 2.0 — SQLite (dev) / PostgreSQL (production)
• Pydantic v2 — immutable, validated audit schema

License

Apache 2.0