Campus Katral · Lesson 15 · 12 min

Retrieve wide, then rank

In one sentence

First search is cheap and noisy. A second pass keeps the three strips that actually answer.

Nila

Nila

Campus mentor

AI is not a person. It is a next-word engine with a very good memory of patterns.

Read the idea, watch the picture, then try it with your hands.

Watch the idea

The concept

Question

What you ask

Retrieve

The right page

Answer or refuse

Never invent a citation

Wide, then strict

Keywords catch rare names. Vectors catch paraphrases. Rerank twenty. Send three. More is not kinder.

Hope is not a retriever

If the top three do not hold the answer, refuse. Decorating a miss is how citations get invented.

Worked example

The extra page

You stuffed ten strips. The model answered from strip nine, which was about parking. Three strips would have been honest.

Picture to keep

Wide · Rank · Three

  1. 1Keyword + vector
  2. 2Rerank twenty
  3. 3Answer from three or refuse