Tribal: Explore Relationships
tribal_exploreTraverse relationships from a knowledge item to reveal supporting evidence, contradictions, derivation sources, or superseding claims. Understand context by controlling traversal direction and depth.
Instructions
Traverse the relationship graph from a specific knowledge item. Use this after tribal_discover to understand an item's context: what supports it, what contradicts it, what it was derived from, or what it supersedes.
Typical workflow:
tribal_discover finds relevant items
Pick an item with interesting standing (high support, or contradictions)
tribal_explore to see the evidence, contradictions, or derivation chain
Direction controls traversal:
"inbound": What do others assert about this item? (supports, contradictions, what supersedes it)
"outbound": What does this item assert about others? (what it's derived from, what it supports)
"both": Full neighbourhood in all directions
Relation types:
"supports": Evidence that reinforces the item
"contradicts": Evidence that challenges the item
"supersedes": A newer item that replaces this one
"derived_from": Provenance. The input used to produce this item
Depth controls hops: depth 1 = direct relations, depth 2 = relations of relations. Higher depth gives more context but more results. Depth is capped at 3 to avoid mixing unrelated evidence across distant graph regions; use multiple targeted calls for deeper investigation.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| depth | No | Maximum traversal hops from anchor. 1 = direct relations only. | |
| direction | No | Traversal direction relative to the anchor item. | inbound |
| include_references | No | Return references attached to each item. | |
| include_standing | No | Compute standing for each returned item. Adds latency at depth > 1. | |
| item_id | Yes | The anchor item to explore from. Typically obtained from a tribal_discover result. | |
| limit | No | Maximum total results across all depths. Closer relations are returned first. | |
| relation_types | No | Filter to specific relation types. Omit to return all types. | |
| session_trace_id | No | Trace ID from a prior tribal_discover call. If provided, this explore is part of the same retrieval session. The returned trace_id will match. Use this to build coherent feedback across discover + explore workflows. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| anchor | Yes | ||
| anchor_standing | Yes | ||
| exact | Yes | True if all reachable items within depth were returned. False if truncated by limit. | |
| related_items | Yes | ||
| trace_id | Yes | Trace ID. Pass to tribal_feedback if rating this session. |