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name: rag-patterns description: | Retrieval-Augmented Generation architecture patterns. Chunking strategies, retrieval pipelines, re-ranking, hybrid search, evaluation, and production RAG system design.

USE WHEN: user mentions "RAG", "retrieval augmented generation", "document Q&A", "knowledge base chatbot", "semantic search pipeline", "chunking strategy"

DO NOT USE FOR: vector database specifics - use vector-databases; LangChain implementation - use langchain; direct LLM API calls - use Claude/OpenAI SDK skills allowed-tools: Read, Grep, Glob, Write, Edit

RAG Patterns

Standard RAG Pipeline

Documents → Chunk → Embed → Store (vector DB)
Query → Embed → Retrieve → Augment prompt → Generate answer

Chunking Strategies

from langchain_text_splitters import RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter

# Recommended defaults
splitter = RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter(
    chunk_size=800,      # chars (not tokens)
    chunk_overlap=200,
    separators=["\n\n", "\n", ". ", " ", ""],
)
chunks = splitter.split_documents(docs)

Strategy	Best For	Chunk Size
Fixed-size with overlap	General text	500-1000 chars
Recursive character	Structured docs	500-1000 chars
Semantic (by meaning)	Long-form content	Variable
Document-aware (markdown headers)	Technical docs	Section-based

Metadata Enrichment

for chunk in chunks:
    chunk.metadata.update({
        "source": doc.metadata["source"],
        "section": extract_section_title(chunk),
        "doc_id": doc.metadata["id"],
        "chunk_index": i,
    })

Retrieval Strategies

Hybrid Search (keyword + semantic)

from langchain.retrievers import EnsembleRetriever
from langchain_community.retrievers import BM25Retriever

bm25 = BM25Retriever.from_documents(docs, k=5)
vector_retriever = vectorstore.as_retriever(search_kwargs={"k": 5})

hybrid = EnsembleRetriever(
    retrievers=[bm25, vector_retriever],
    weights=[0.3, 0.7],
)

Re-ranking

from cohere import Client

cohere = Client(api_key=COHERE_API_KEY)

def rerank(query: str, documents: list[str], top_n: int = 5):
    response = cohere.rerank(
        model="rerank-english-v3.0",
        query=query,
        documents=documents,
        top_n=top_n,
    )
    return [documents[r.index] for r in response.results]

Multi-query Retrieval

# Generate multiple query variations for better recall
prompt = """Generate 3 different versions of this question
to retrieve relevant documents: {question}"""

queries = llm.invoke(prompt).split("\n")
all_docs = set()
for q in queries:
    all_docs.update(retriever.invoke(q))

Prompt Construction

SYSTEM_PROMPT = """Answer based only on the provided context.
If the context doesn't contain the answer, say "I don't have enough information."
Cite sources using [Source: filename] format.

Context:
{context}"""

def format_context(docs, max_tokens=3000):
    context_parts = []
    for doc in docs:
        source = doc.metadata.get("source", "unknown")
        context_parts.append(f"[Source: {source}]\n{doc.page_content}")
    return "\n\n---\n\n".join(context_parts)

Evaluation

Metric	Measures	Tool
Context Relevance	Are retrieved docs relevant?	RAGAS, manual
Faithfulness	Does answer match context?	RAGAS
Answer Relevance	Does answer address question?	RAGAS
Retrieval Recall	Are correct docs retrieved?	Custom eval set

from ragas import evaluate
from ragas.metrics import faithfulness, answer_relevancy, context_precision

result = evaluate(dataset, metrics=[faithfulness, answer_relevancy, context_precision])

Anti-Patterns

Anti-Pattern	Fix
Chunks too large (>1500 chars)	Use 500-1000 char chunks with 200 overlap
No metadata on chunks	Store source, section, page number
No retrieval evaluation	Build eval set, measure recall and precision
Stuffing all chunks in prompt	Limit to top-K (3-5), use re-ranking
Ignoring hybrid search	Combine BM25 + vector for better recall
No citation/source tracking	Pass metadata through pipeline

Production Checklist

• Chunking strategy tuned with eval set
• Hybrid search (BM25 + vector) enabled
• Re-ranking on retrieval results
• Source attribution in answers
• Guardrails for out-of-scope questions
• Monitoring: retrieval latency, answer quality scores
• Incremental indexing for new documents