L17 · Retrieval and RAG

L17 · Phase 5 · 25 min

Retrieval and RAG

“I uploaded a 100-page technical manual — does AI Tool have to permanently learn the whole thing to answer questions about it?”

RAG Simulator — 100-page manual

Which section of the manual do you think would be retrieved to answer this?

Prototype note: this simulator matches on hand-picked keywords, not real embedding similarity search — enough to demonstrate that a specific section gets selected rather than the whole manual, not enough to replicate a real vector search engine.

Depth ladder

Uploading a 100-page manual doesn't make the model permanently learn it — the document gets searched at question time, the same way you'd flip to the relevant page, not memorised cover to cover.

Knowledge check

Given a manual and a question, predict which section would be retrieved before revealing the actual result.