4 posts
Pure vector search misses exact terms; pure keyword search misses meaning. A practical guide to combining BM25 and vector search in RAG with RRF and contextual retrieval.
2026 RAG is no longer linear. Adaptive routing, the agentic retrieve-reason-retrieve loop, five production patterns, and the highest-ROI intervention: hybrid retrieval + reranker.
Do you really need a reranker? When reranking adds value and when it is unnecessary in a RAG retrieval pipeline, cross-encoders, benchmarking, and a decision guide.
What is a reranker? A reranker is a model that re-orders the candidate documents retrieved in the first stage of a search or RAG system according to their true relevance to the query. This guide: a clear definition, why it is needed, how it works, the cross-encoder architecture, two-stage retrieval, its place in the RAG pipeline, retrieval quality, and FAQs.