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hardCohere Glean Microsoft

What is query transformation in RAG (HyDE, decomposition, step-back), and when does each help?

Retrieval quality is capped by the query, and raw user queries are often bad for search. The signal is knowing the techniques that rewrite the query before retrieval and which failure each fixes.

Updated Aug 2026 · Grounded in real Applied AI Engineer interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.

Retrieval quality is capped by the query, and raw user queries are often bad for search. The signal is knowing the techniques that rewrite the query before retrieval and which failure each fixes.

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Next in this trackWhat is GraphRAG, and when does it beat traditional vector RAG?Next in this trackWhat is Self-RAG / adaptive retrieval, and how does the model decide when to retrieve?Next in this trackWhat is the Model Context Protocol (MCP), and how do you design good tools for an agent?

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