Best RAG Startegies

Implementation Roadmap: Start Simple, Scale Smart

Don’t try to implement everything at once. Here’s a practical roadmap:

Phase 1: Foundation (Week 1)

Context-aware chunking (replace fixed-size splitting)

Basic vector search with proper embeddings

Measure baseline accuracy

Phase 2: Quick Wins (Week 2–3)

Add re-ranking (biggest accuracy boost for effort)

Implement query expansion (handles vague queries)

Measure improvement

Phase 3: Advanced (Week 4–6)

Add multi-query or agentic RAG (choose based on use case)

Implement self-reflection for critical queries

Fine-tune and optimize

Phase 4: Specialization (Month 2+)

Add contextual retrieval for high-value documents

Consider knowledge graphs if relationships matter

Fine-tune embeddings for domain-specific accuracy

references

https://pub.towardsai.net/i-spent-3-months-building-ra-systems-before-learning-these-11-strategies-1a8f6b4278aa