Jeevan Srivastava asked this question word for word in a Medium article of 18 October 2026 , as one of three dimensions he would assess for a production system, beside retrieval quality and operational performance. He labels his access-control design: "These are proposed production design decisions, not features I'm claiming to have implemented as part of my retrieval fix."

TL;DR

Yes, through any read path the permission check does not cover. The question names three: the lexical branch of a hybrid search, filtered differently from the vector branch; a cache that answers before the check runs; and indirect references, such as a fetch by ID or exact name, a pointer to a hidden record, or a scope value supplied by the request or the model.

One rule addresses all three: the server derives the read scope from the verified caller identity and applies one filter on every path that can return stored content.…