AI engineering glossary · RAG vector search
What is multi-hop retrieval?
Multi-hop retrieval: Answering a question that needs several pieces of evidence chained together, where each retrieval step depends on what earlier steps found. It is harder than single-step lookup because the second query is unknown until the first result is read.
Multi-hop retrieval: an example
To find 'the CEO of the company that acquired Flipkart', first retrieve the acquirer, then search for its CEO.
Related terms
- Query decomposition
- Agentic RAG
- Iterative retrieval
More RAG vector search terms
- Multi-query retrieval
- Multi-tenancy
- Multi-vector retrieval
- Multimodal retrieval
- Nearest neighbour search
- nprobe
- Parent-document retrieval
- pgvector
Where you learn it
Multi-hop retrieval is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.