Your first RAG project: retrieval before complexity.

Choose a small document collection and write ten realistic questions before implementing retrieval. Include questions the documents cannot answer.

JPC Editorial · 2026-09-11 · 7 min read

Difficulty: Foundation

RAG

Start with the problem

Choose a small document collection and write ten realistic questions before implementing retrieval. Include questions the documents cannot answer.

Create a baseline with simple chunking and retrieval. Inspect the retrieved passages before adding generation.

Require citations and an explicit no-answer response. Compare results against your question set and record failure cases.

Improve one variable at a time: chunk size, retrieval strategy, or prompt. Keep the evaluation set stable so changes are explainable.