Make query reformulation into subqueries your default retrieval step — agentic RAG is the new baseline

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Decomposing a user question into multiple targeted subqueries before retrieval improved results so much it's now the baseline ('normal RAG is dead'), with a reasoner planning what to fetch based on intent rather than embedding the raw query once. Pair it with dynamic context compression: summarize earlier retrieval rounds instead of carrying full chunks forward, prioritize by relevance score, and keep a sliding window of the strongest evidence. Buyer intent for hybrid retrieval tripled (10.3%→33.3%) in Q1 2026, so the field is consolidating on reasoner-driven, multi-query retrieval.