Mind · Memory

RetrievalAugment

Ground responses in retrieved external knowledge

Definition

Mechanism

Before generating a response, the Agent queries an external knowledge store to retrieve material relevant to the current Context. The retrieval follows ContextFirst: the lookup completes before generation begins, and the retrieved material is supplied as context for the response. The store, retrieval method, selection policy, and response process remain caller- or descendant-defined.

Invariants

  1. Query Before Generate: Retrieval must precede response generation

Risks

Failure modes

  1. Retrieval Poisoning

    Malicious or incorrect material returned by the store contaminates responses.

  2. {{context}} Stuffing

    Retrieved material exceeds the available Context capacity, causing critical information to be omitted or truncated.

Relationships

Builds on

References

Agent

Autonomous Goal-Directed Entity

Infrastructure

Context

Portable execution environment with inherited constraints

Used by

References

Reference

Identity

Ref
RetrievalAugment#6f84
Sema ID
sema:RetrievalAugment#mh:SHA-256:6f840cc4134b302b712d8f59dcca0c1b446c255369a8cea11031e884c16f3052
Ring
2
Tier
2
Updated
2026-11-11
Supersedes
  • sema:RetrievalAugment#mh:SHA-256:ca586b1cfff0f1d6db36de4ef419b29d21e55e8382db24b435fe9bb00ad32241
  • sema:RetrievalAugment#mh:SHA-256:7ca744ce28611156f415add4da95e3dc93006d92061a05139e17b70d3882e848
  • sema:RetrievalAugment#mh:SHA-256:95fc6c4071bdede8f9e366e3d268cba27459256c62d4510359c916c80018d85e
  • sema:RetrievalAugment#mh:SHA-256:9c601193335e19b27f2b94ee1fe6c324e6db3278af4d408d6f594f6ff3ef7d15