If you want to become top-tier with AI agents, read these 10 foundational papers (save them):

8 RAG architectures for AI Engineers:

(explained with usage)

1) Naive RAG
- Retrieves documents purely based on vector similarity between the query embedding and stored embeddings.
- Works best for simple, fact-based queries where direct semantic matching suffices.

2) Multimodal RAG
- Handles multiple data types (text, images, audio, etc.) by embedding and retrieving across modalities.
- Ideal for cross-modal retrieval tasks like answering a text query with both text and image context.

3) HyDE (Hypothetical Document Embeddings)
- Queries are not semantically similar to documents.
- This technique generates a hypothetical answer document from the query before retrieval.
- Uses this generated document’s embedding to find more relevant real documents.

4) Corrective RAG
- Validates retrieved results by comparing them against trusted sources (e.g., web search).
- Ensures up-to-date and accurate information, filtering or correcting retrieved content before passing to the LLM.

5) Graph RAG
- Converts retrieved content into a knowledge graph to capture relationships and entities.
- Enhances reasoning by providing structured context alongside raw text to the LLM.

6) Hybrid RAG
- Combines dense vector retrieval with graph-based retrieval in a single pipeline.
- Useful when the task requires both unstructured text and structured relational data for richer answers.

7) Adaptive RAG
- Dynamically decides if a query requires a simple direct retrieval or a multi-step reasoning chain.
- Breaks complex queries into smaller sub-queries for better coverage and accuracy.

8) Agentic RAG
- Uses AI agents with planning, reasoning (ReAct, CoT), and memory to orchestrate retrieval from multiple sources.
- Best suited for complex workflows that require tool use, external APIs, or combining multiple RAG techniques.

Most architectures here involve some form of retrieval-time decision. But they all run on top of whatever was already indexed.

If that indexing step outputs messy chunks, every architecture inherits them. Improving it is a separate problem from the 8 above.

I wrote about a better unit for the indexing step. The technique:

- cuts corpus size by 40x.
- reduces tokens per query by 3x.
- improves vector search relevance by 2.3x.

And it doesn't alter the retrieval algorithm, the reranker, or the embedding model.

Read it in the article quoted below.

Castor lets you cast web video from your terminal directly to your TV at full quality, bypassing screen mirroring and its lag or resolution drops.

- Extracts video streams from web pages using headless Chrome with stealth scripts
- Transcodes and casts in real time, including auto-generated subtitles
- Accepts direct stream URLs or IMDB/TMDB IDs for instant casting
- Runs as a native binary with Homebrew support on macOS