Glossary

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)

What is Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)?

Retrieval-augmented generation combines search with text generation: before answering, the system searches a knowledge collection – such as manuals, policies or FAQs – for relevant passages and passes them to the language model as context. The answer is therefore based on current, company-specific content rather than only on the model's training knowledge. This reduces invented statements, makes sources traceable and allows updates without retraining.

How KI.ordo helps

This is exactly how KI.ordo agents work: they search the stored knowledge using keyword search (BM25) and answer with source references.

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Topics

RAG
knowledge search
language models

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Related terms

Retrieval pipeline

A retrieval pipeline is the sequence of processing steps a system uses to find the right information for a question. Typical steps are: ingesting and cleaning documents, splitting them into chunks, building a search index, optionally rewriting the query, retrieving matches, ranking them (reranking) and passing the best ones to the language model. It is the foundation of every RAG application, and its quality largely determines how good the resulting answers are.

Hallucination

A hallucination is output from an AI model that sounds convincing but is wrong or entirely made up – such as a non-existent court ruling, an incorrect figure or an invented source. The cause: language models produce likely wording; they do not automatically look up facts. The risk falls when answers are based on verified sources, evidence is cited and people check important results.

Language models
Reliability
+1

Template

Cache-augmented generation (CAG)

Cache-augmented generation (CAG) is an approach in which a language model does not search for knowledge with every question. Instead, a manageable knowledge base is loaded into its context window in advance and that state is cached, so answers need no separate retrieval step. The term was popularised by a late-2024 research paper as an alternative to retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). CAG suits small, stable knowledge bases; for large or frequently changing data, RAG usually remains more practical.

RAG
Context window
+1

Information Retrieval

Information retrieval covers methods that find the documents or passages in a large body of text that match a query and rank them by relevance. Classic approaches such as BM25 weight search terms by how often and how rarely they occur; newer ones add semantic similarity. It underpins search engines, enterprise search and retrieval-augmented generation, in which a language model uses the retrieved passages as the basis for its answer.

Search
BM25
+1