Advanced Topics

Take your RAG implementation to the next level with advanced retrieval techniques, performance optimization, and comprehensive monitoring.

Topics

RAG Pipeline Overview

Understanding the full RAG pipeline helps you optimize each stage:

User Query
    │
    ▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│  Query Processing   │  ← Multi-query, HyDE
└─────────┬───────────┘
          │
          ▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│  Vector Search      │  ← Embeddings, similarity
└─────────┬───────────┘
          │
          ▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│  Keyword Search     │  ← BM25 (if hybrid enabled)
└─────────┬───────────┘
          │
          ▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│  Merge & Rerank     │  ← Cohere reranking
└─────────┬───────────┘
          │
          ▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│  Context Assembly   │  ← Top K chunks
└─────────┬───────────┘
          │
          ▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│  LLM Generation     │  ← GPT-4, Claude, etc.
└─────────┬───────────┘
          │
          ▼
    Response + Sources

Optimization Strategies

Improve Relevance

• Enable reranking: Single biggest impact on quality
• Use hybrid search: Catches keyword-based queries
• Tune similarity threshold: Balance recall vs precision
• Increase top_k: More candidates for reranker

Improve Speed

• Lower top_k: Fewer chunks to process
• Disable HyDE: Removes extra LLM call
• Use faster models: GPT-3.5 or Claude Haiku
• Reduce max_tokens: Shorter responses

Reduce Costs

• Lower top_k: Less context = fewer input tokens
• Use cheaper models: GPT-3.5 for simple queries
• Cache common queries: (Enterprise feature)
• Limit response length: Lower max_tokens

Quality Evaluation

Systematically evaluate and improve your bot's quality:

1. Build test set: Collect real user questions
2. Define ground truth: Expected answers or sources
3. Measure metrics: Relevance, accuracy, latency
4. Iterate: Adjust settings, re-evaluate

Common Challenges

Bot says "I don't know" too often

• Lower similarity threshold
• Enable hybrid search
• Check content exists in knowledge base
• Enable allow_general_knowledge

Responses are slow

• Reduce top_k
• Disable HyDE and multi-query
• Use a faster model
• Check data source size

Wrong sources cited

• Enable reranking
• Raise similarity threshold
• Review document quality
• Update system prompt

Enterprise Features

Additional capabilities for Enterprise plans:

• Response caching: Cache common queries
• Custom embeddings: Fine-tuned for your domain
• A/B testing: Compare configurations
• Advanced analytics: Detailed query insights
• SLA guarantees: Uptime and latency SLAs