How to disable knowledge base source citations in Bedrock Agent responses

[zhang2645795251]

Hello AWS Bedrock Team,

I'm working with Amazon Bedrock Agents and have encountered an issue where I need to remove knowledge base source citations (such as <sources> tags or attribution information) from the agent's responses.

Current Situation:

When my agent responds to queries using information from a connected knowledge base, it automatically includes source citations (like document references or <sources> tags) in the output. While this is useful in some cases, I need to disable this feature for certain use cases where I want to present only the clean answer without any source attribution.

What I've Tried:

I've attempted configuring the sessionState.knowledgeBaseConfigurations parameter in the invoke_agent API call, focusing on the retrievalConfiguration settings. Here's a simplified version of my configuration:

request_params = {
    'agentId': 'MY_AGENT_ID',
    'agentAliasId': 'MY_ALIAS_ID',
    'sessionId': 'MY_SESSION_ID',
    'inputText': 'user query',
    'sessionState': {
        'knowledgeBaseConfigurations': [
            {
                'knowledgeBaseId': 'MY_KNOWLEDGE_BASE_ID',
                'retrievalConfiguration': {
                    'vectorSearchConfiguration': {
                        # My filters and configurations
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

However, this still results in source information being included in the response.
Questions:
Is there an official way to disable knowledge base source citations in the agent's responses?
Are there specific parameters or configurations in the invoke_agent API that control the inclusion of source information?
If this feature isn't currently available, are there any workarounds or plans to support it in future releases?
I've reviewed the Boto3 documentation for AgentsforBedrockRuntime but couldn't find explicit information about controlling source citations.
Any guidance or clarification would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks

[tayfuryldz]

There isn't a boto3 client-side switch in invoke_agent that tells Bedrock to generate a knowledge-base answer but omit the associated attribution metadata. knowledgeBaseConfigurations controls retrieval behavior (filters/search configuration, etc.); it isn't a presentation toggle for citations.

One useful distinction is where you're seeing them. If you're reading the structured attribution / retrieved-reference data from the streamed response, your application can simply choose not to render that metadata. If literal <sources> text is being generated inside the answer text itself, that is model/orchestration behavior and post-processing or prompt/orchestration changes would be needed; dropping structured attribution won't remove text already generated into the completion.

So I wouldn't expect a retrieval configuration parameter to solve this. Keep retrieval/citation data available internally if useful, and make the UI/output layer decide whether to display the structured citations.

[kimnamu]

Thanks @zhang2645795251 for spelling out the exact sessionState you tried, and @tayfuryldz for separating the structured attribution data from <sources> text inside the completion. One concrete pointer to add to that answer.

The lever is on the agent build side, not in invoke_agent. The default orchestration prompt template is what instructs the model to collate <sources> into its answer, so overriding that template with promptOverrideConfiguration (bedrock-agent update_agent, promptType="ORCHESTRATION") and removing that guideline, then prepare_agent, is where the citation instruction lives and the closest thing to an official switch.

Where	What controls citations	Checked against
invoke_agent request	Nothing. knowledgeBaseConfigurations[] accepts only knowledgeBaseId and retrievalConfiguration	botocore model, output below
invoke_agent response	chunk.attribution.citations[] (structured, response-only; your renderer can drop it)	same
Agent orchestration prompt	Claude 3 default template line: "If there are <sources> in the <function_results> from knowledge bases then always collate the sources and add them in you answers in the format <answer_part><text>$answer$</text><sources><source>$source$</source></sources></answer_part>". Claude 3.5+ templates carry it as the $knowledge_base_guideline$ placeholder, described as "instructions for the model to format the output with citations"	Advanced prompt templates, placeholders

Offline check with boto3/botocore 1.40.76 (no credentials, botocore.validate.validate_parameters against the service model):

InvokeAgent sessionState.knowledgeBaseConfigurations[] members: ['knowledgeBaseId', 'retrievalConfiguration']
InvokeAgent request shapes named *Citation*/*Attribution*: none
Response chunk (PayloadPart) members: ['bytes', 'attribution']
invoke_agent with includeCitations -> Unknown parameter in sessionState.knowledgeBaseConfigurations[0]: "includeCitations", must be one of: knowledgeBaseId, retrievalConfiguration
bedrock-agent PromptType enum: ['PRE_PROCESSING', 'ORCHESTRATION', 'POST_PROCESSING', 'KNOWLEDGE_BASE_RESPONSE_GENERATION', 'MEMORY_SUMMARIZATION']
PromptConfiguration members: ['promptType', 'promptCreationMode', 'promptState', 'basePromptTemplate', ...]
update_agent(promptOverrideConfiguration=ORCHESTRATION/OVERRIDDEN) -> passes client validation; PrepareAgent op present: True

bedrock_agent.update_agent(
    agentId=..., agentName=..., agentResourceRoleArn=..., foundationModel=...,
    promptOverrideConfiguration={"promptConfigurations": [{
        "promptType": "ORCHESTRATION",
        "promptCreationMode": "OVERRIDDEN",
        "promptState": "ENABLED",
        "basePromptTemplate": template,  # the default template for your model, minus the <sources> guideline line
    }]},
)
bedrock_agent.prepare_agent(agentId=...)

Caveats and where this comes from

• Start from the default template for your foundation model (the console shows it under Advanced prompts, and the docs page above lists them) and change only the citation guideline, so the default parser still finds <answer> and the other tags it expects.
• I verified the API surface offline against botocore develop (f9195c7) and the docs text, not against a live agent. Whether chunk.attribution also goes away once the model stops emitting <sources> is something I could not observe, so keeping the renderer-side filter from the earlier comment is a sensible belt-and-braces step. A test alias is the cheap way to confirm.
• For direct retrieve_and_generate calls the equivalent knob is the $output_format_instructions$ placeholder in the generation prompt; the Knowledge Bases docs say "Without this placeholder, the response won't contain citations" (kb-test-config).
• Shape names in the bedrock-agent-runtime model containing citation/attribution are Attribution, Citation, CitationEvent, Citations, and none of them are reachable from InvokeAgentRequest.