AI engineering glossary · RAG vector search
What is pre-filtering?
Pre-filtering: Applying metadata conditions before or during the nearest-neighbour search so only allowed items are considered. Results always honour the filter, but very selective filters can make graph or partitioned indexes slow or less accurate.
Pre-filtering: an example
A search for tenant_id = 42 only traverses vectors belonging to tenant 42 and returns 10 full results.
Related terms
More RAG vector search terms
- Product quantisation
- Proposition indexing
- Query decomposition
- Query expansion
- Query rewriting
- RAG evaluation
- Ragas
- RAPTOR
Where you learn it
Pre-filtering is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.