RAG Explained: How Retrieval-Augmented Generation Actually Works (opens in new tab)

The Two Phases of RAG RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) splits into two separate pipelines: Ingestion pipeline — runs once (or on a schedule) to process your documents Query pipeline — runs live for every user request Why Not Just Send All Your Text to the LLM? Three hard problems: Cost — millions of tokens per query = $$$ Context limits — even 128K token windows can't hold an entire knowledge base Quality — LLMs get confused when buried in irrelevant text RAG surgically extracts only the ...