What is Knowledge Retrieval?

Explained

Knowledge retrieval finds and returns the most relevant documents or passages for a user query. It uses semantic search (embeddings) and sometimes hybrid approaches; it is the 'R' in RAG.

Further reading

• Vector Databases for RAG: Powering Semantic Search for LLMs

Related terms

• RAG Retrieve relevant documents and use them as context to generate the answer.
• Retrieval Search phase that fetches relevant documents or passages for a query.
• Semantic Search Search by meaning, not just exact words; uses embeddings.
• Big Data Large volumes of data requiring specialized tools; feedstock for training AI models.
• Context Engineering Designing what the model sees—retrieval, memory, summaries, and window budgeting.
• Corpus Collection of documents used to train or feed a system (e.g., RAG).