RS Glossary
Search / Retrieval
Search is the process of looking through available information to find the most relevant items, documents, or answers.
- Review state
- Reviewed in POC
- Freshness
- Current
- Version
- 2
- Search
- Retrieval
- Information Retrieval
Remember it this waySearch finds candidates; verification decides what they support.
In plain language
Search or retrieval is the process of finding items that are relevant to a query or information need. A system may use keywords, structured filters, learned representations, ranking, or several methods together.
Why it matters
Retrieved material often becomes evidence or model context. Quality depends on indexing, query design, ranking, permissions, freshness, and whether the result actually supports the claim being made.
Example
A support assistant searches approved manuals for passages about a specific error code and passes the highest-ranked relevant passages to the response step.
Common misconception
Retrieval does not prove that a result is true or sufficient. It finds candidates; verification and interpretation remain separate work.
Related terms
Sources
- Christopher Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan, and Hinrich Schütze, “Introduction to Information Retrieval”provides the established information-retrieval foundation for indexing, querying, and ranking relevant documents.
- Patrick Lewis and colleagues, “Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks”shows retrieved passages used as external context for generation.
Learn more
- Compare [[retrieval-augmented-generation|Retrieval-Augmented Generation]], [[grounding|Grounding]], [[embedding|Embedding]], and [[verification|Verification]] to place Search / Retrieval in the surrounding system.
- Follow the cited source material above for the method, standard, or research context behind this draft.
Public history
23 recorded events · 23 public summaries
A potential shared concept was discussed and selected for initial glossary drafting.
The captured candidate received a complete initial draft and entered section-level human review.
Radar reviewed the initial definition draft for human consideration.
Radar reviewed the initial plain-language-explanation draft for human consideration.
Radar reviewed the initial why-it-matters draft for human consideration.
Radar reviewed the initial example draft for human consideration.
Radar reviewed the initial common-misconception draft for human consideration.
Radar reviewed the initial remember-it-this-way draft for human consideration.
Radar reviewed the initial related-terms draft for human consideration.
Radar reviewed the initial sources draft for human consideration.
Radar reviewed the initial learn-more draft for human consideration.
Definition review recorded as approve.
Plain-Language Explanation review recorded as approve.
Why It Matters review recorded as approve.
Example review recorded as approve.
Common Misconception review recorded as approve.
Remember It This Way review recorded as approve.
Related Terms review recorded as approve.
Sources review recorded as approve.
Learn More review recorded as approve.
Sources review recorded as replace.
Radar verified the learner-facing sources after personal origin provenance was removed.
All nine current wording approvals were reconciled to Approved term status.
Source: vault/Glossary/terms/search-retrieval/term.md · sha256:ef87d394641d7b450281c813274c9c4e261e89b0a66e3ba04524a5ce00744235 · Release: rs-glossary-glossary-team-poc-0.5.5-2026-09-02