Is the "Include citations" checkbox in Agent settings the same as `"include_retrieval_info": true` in the API?

Posted on May 11, 2025

Does this setting only affect the “playground” and the provided chatbot widget or does it also change the API behavior?

It’s not clear exactly how this works and.what it’s supposed to do. In the playground it’s functionality seems to just hyper link to the same information that is linked from “Message Info” below every message whether that checkbox is checked or not.

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Bobby Iliev

May 12, 2025

Hey Setec,

From what I can tell, the “Include citations” checkbox in the Agent settings mainly affects how citations are displayed in the Playground and the built-in chatbot widget, I guess that it is likely it doesn’t change API behavior on its own.

If you’re working with the API directly and want retrieval metadata like source documents or citations, you probably need to set "include_retrieval_info": true explicitly in your request. I think that this seems to be what controls whether the retrievals field is returned in the response.

So while the checkbox and the API flag appear to serve similar purposes, they don’t seem to be directly linked, at least not in a way that impacts the API output automatically. But I haven’t found official confirmation on this.

Has the DigitalOcean support team been able to confirm if this is the case?

- Bobby