note · growing
Query transforms
Rewrite, HyDE, multi-query, decomposition, routing — the win available without touching the index.
The sentence a user types is not a sentence written for search. Touching the query before retrieval is the biggest win available without touching the index.
Rewriteresolve the conversation: "what about that one?"
HyDEgenerate a hypothetical answer, embed that
Multi-querysearch three phrasings, fuse the results
Decompositionsplit a multi-hop question into sub-questions
Routingwhich source: vectors, SQL, the web
Rendering diagram…
Every transform is another LLM call — latency plus tokens. Measure first: how many of your queries are actually ambiguous? If most are one-shot, put this behind a router.