Parent Document and Sentence-Window Retrieval
Decouple the chunks you search from the chunks you return so the LLM gets precise matches with rich context.
The Chunk-Size Dilemma
Small chunks search precisely but lack context; large chunks give context but dilute relevance. Parent document retrieval resolves this tension by searching small and returning large.
Two Chunk Sizes
Index small child chunks for accurate similarity matching, but keep a link to the larger parent chunk that surrounds each one.
- Search on child embeddings
- Return parent text to the LLM
All lessons in this course
- Multi-Query Retrieval Strategies
- Contextual Compression with LLMs
- Hybrid Search and Re-ranking
- Parent Document and Sentence-Window Retrieval