A Small RAG Experiment: Question, Search, Answer
The RAG idea in this Short becomes easier to understand when I sketch its moving parts.
Start with a question. Search a collection for material related to it. Give the selected passages to the model along with the question. Then inspect the answer.
For a first experiment, I would use a small document I already know. That makes it possible to notice when the search misses something or the answer changes its meaning.
Try a question with an answer in the source, followed by one the source cannot answer. The second case matters: the system should not turn missing information into a confident invention.
This is what I like about treating retrieval as a visible step. I can ask whether the right material was found before judging the writing that followed. The model's response is only one part of the system.