Why Naive Chunking Hurts Retrieval

Chunking is the process of splitting documents into smaller pieces before embedding them into a vector store. The way you chunk determines what context is available during retrieval. Poor chunking is one of the most common and impactful causes of RAG system failures.

Imagine a document that says: 'The refund policy is 30 days from purchase. Customers must include the original receipt.' If a fixed-size splitter cuts after 'purchase.', these two sentences land in different chunks. A query about the refund policy may only retrieve the first half — making the model unable to mention the receipt requirement.