Advanced RAG Learning Roadmap
Module 1: RAG Fundamentals & Baseline Pipeline
- Understand what RAG is and why it exists (limitations of pure LLMs: hallucinations, missing private/updated data).
- Study high-level RAG architecture: data source → retriever → LLM with augmented context.
- Learn core components: documents vs chunks vs metadata; embedding model, vector store, retriever, reranker; keyword vs sem
- Implement a minimal RAG pipeline using a framework (LangChain, LlamaIndex, etc.): ingestion, retrieval, and generation with a s
Module 1 Task:
Build a minimal QA bot over a small set of documents (e.g., your own project docs). Ingest documents, embed and store them, the
Module 2: Data Ingestion, Cleaning & Chunking
- Learn to ingest PDFs, HTML, DOCX, code repos, and APIs; normalize encodings and strip boilerplate.
- Experiment with different chunking strategies: fixed-size, sliding window, sentence/window-based, and hierarchical/auto-merging
- Design metadata schemas: source, title, section, timestamps, tags, etc., for better filtering and debugging.
- Use practical tools/libraries for parsing and cleaning documents.
Module 2 Task:
Take a messy real-world dataset (mixed PDFs + HTML). Build an ingestion pipeline that cleans text and implements at least two c
Module 3: Embeddings & Vector Stores
- Understand what embeddings are and how similarity search works conceptually.
- Compare general-purpose vs domain-specific embedding models; study trade-offs in accuracy, latency, and cost.
- Learn vector database concepts: indexes (HNSW, IVF, Flat), approximate nearest neighbour search, metadata storage, and filte
- Implement semantic search with a vector DB (Chroma, FAISS, Weaviate, Pinecone, etc.) and measure latency and index size.
Module 3 Task:
Using your chunks from Module 2, run comparative retrieval experiments with at least two embedding models. For a fixed set of qu
Module 4: Advanced Retrieval Techniques
- Study multi-query retrieval: generate multiple reformulations of a query and aggregate results.
- Learn HyDE (hypothetical document expansion): generate an ideal answer and embed it for retrieval.
- Implement contextual compression: use a model to filter or compress retrieved chunks before final answer generation.
- Explore parent-document retrieval: index small chunks but retrieve the larger parent segment/document.
- Learn self-query retrieval: convert natural language queries into structured filters plus vector search.
- Add rerankers (cross-encoder or LLM-based) to improve ranking of retrieved chunks.
Module 4 Task:
Upgrade your baseline RAG system by adding multi-query retrieval and a reranker. Compare top-k quality and answers for hard q
Module 5: Advanced RAG Architectures
- Study RAG Fusion / query fusion: combining results from multiple queries or retrieval strategies (BM25 + vector, etc.).
- Learn Corrective RAG (CRAG) and Self-RAG: detect low-confidence answers and trigger extra retrieval or reasoning.
- Explore Graph RAG: represent documents as a graph of entities and relations and query via graph + embeddings.
- Design domain-specific pipelines that combine various tools (search APIs, SQL, vector DBs) in one workflow.
Module 5 Task:
Design and implement a Corrective RAG variant of your system. When similarity scores or context quality are low, trigger an addit
Module 6: Agentic RAG with LangGraph (or similar)
- Understand what agentic RAG is: planning, tool use, reflection, and iterative improvement.
- Learn LangGraph (or a similar framework): nodes (tools/calls), edges (control flow), and shared state.
- Design multi-step workflows: query analysis → retrieval → answer → self-critique → optional extra retrieval → final answer.
- Integrate external tools (APIs, SQL, etc.) into the agentic RAG pipeline.
Module 6 Task:
Implement an agentic RAG workflow with LangGraph (or equivalent). Create nodes for analyzing the question, retrieving, answerin
Module 7: Evaluation, RAGAS & Testing
- Learn the core evaluation dimensions: context relevance, answer relevance, and groundedness.
- Study retrieval metrics: Recall@k, Precision@k, MRR; build labelled query–document pairs.
- Evaluate generation quality: hallucination detection and factual alignment with retrieved context.
- Use RAGAS (or similar frameworks) to compute metrics like faithfulness, answer relevance, context precision/recall, and answer
- Build evaluation datasets from real user queries and ground-truth answers; use them for regression tests.
Module 7 Task:
Create an evaluation suite of 30–50 queries from your real use case with ground-truth answers or labelled documents. Use RAGA
Module 8: Productionization, Monitoring & Optimization
- Design production RAG system architecture with separate ingestion/indexing and query paths.
- Implement caching strategies for embeddings, retrieval results, and LLM outputs.
- Optimize performance: reduce latency via smaller models, batching, truncation, and tuned ANN indexes; control cost through cac
- Add observability: log queries, retrieved documents, and answers; track metrics like success rate, escalation rate, and user feedb
- Address safety, security, and governance: data privacy, access control, and guardrails for unsafe outputs.
- Implement a continuous improvement loop: use logs and feedback to build new test sets, run A/B tests, and iterate on the pipelin
Module 8 Task:
Turn your RAG system into a small production-like service (HTTP API or simple web UI). Add structured logging for each request,