RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)
RAG retrieves relevant text from your sources and passes it to a language model before generation. The point is to ground answers in documents you can name.
Architecture we actually ship
- Ingest sources you have a right to use.
- Chunk and tag so retrieval matches operator questions.
- Embed and store; retrieve top passages at query time.
- Generate only with those passages in context.
- Show sources. Measure retrieval hits and grounded answers separately.
Reranking and hybrid search are added when simple retrieval fails the eval set—not as decoration.
Hire the build: RAG development. Definition: What is RAG?
Questions
When should we not use RAG?
When there is no corpus, no access rights, or the task is not “answer from documents.” Classification or a simple form may be cheaper and clearer.
If the problem maps to work we actually ship, we will say so in 20 minutes.
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