schema · growing
The agentic RAG loop
Think, act, observe, decide. Not a fixed pipeline — an orchestrator running its own search.
Agentic RAG is not a fixed "retrieve and generate" pipeline; it is an orchestrator in which the model runs its own search process.
Rendering diagram…
How it differs from traditional RAG
| Traditional (reactive) | Agentic (proactive) | |
|---|---|---|
| Flow | one way, deterministic | cyclical, dynamic |
| Searches | one | as many as needed |
| Data quality | never questioned | evaluated |
| Missing info | goes unnoticed | triggers a new strategy |
It does not work without a solid middle column. Without metadata, hybrid search and reranking, the agentic layer only makes bad retrieval expensive.