Route queries with Adaptive RAG instead of running full agentic retrieval on everything

Starmorph·medium signal

Agentic, multi-step 'search-during-think' retrieval is powerful but wasteful on the simple questions that dominate real traffic. Adaptive RAG puts a lightweight query classifier in front of the pipeline: simple queries get a single fast/cheap retrieval, while genuinely complex ones are decomposed into sub-queries with interleaved reasoning and progressive evidence gathering. Pair it with hybrid (dense + sparse) retrieval — buyer intent for hybrid tripled from 10.3% to 33.3% in Q1 2026 — to set a strong production baseline without paying agentic cost on every call.