AI engineering glossary · RAG vector search
What is hierarchical chunking?
Hierarchical chunking: Storing text at several granularities, for example document, section and paragraph, linked in a tree. Retrieval can match at one level and move up or down to fetch more or less context as needed.
Hierarchical chunking: an example
A report is indexed as 1 document node, 12 section nodes and 150 paragraph nodes, each pointing to its parent.
Related terms
More RAG vector search terms
Where you learn it
Hierarchical chunking is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.