Knowledge retrieval is the process of locating and returning relevant information from a knowledge source in response to a query or information need. It extends classical information retrieval by operating over structured knowledge, semantic representations and contextual relevance rather than keyword matching alone. It is a foundational capability for question answering, retrieval-augmented generation and conversational agents.
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- Modern systems combine dense vector embeddings, sparse lexical signals and re-ranking to surface contextually relevant passages or facts. As the retrieval stage in retrieval-augmented generation, it grounds language-model outputs in authoritative sources, reducing hallucination and enabling answers over private or up-to-date corpora.