Unverified50% confidenceFactExact time
The five failure modes of retrieval include: vocabulary mismatch, lost context, the question is not the answer, the answer is the entire document, and retrieved but still wrong.
1
Sources
50%
Confidence
Long-term
Relevance
10/18/2026
First Seen
Sources
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Related Claims
UnverifiedA fluent answer generated based on the wrong passage is still a failed result.75% similarUnverifiedThe two most frequently occurring failure types were missing data or fields, and inconsistencies in search, filtering, or sorting criteria.73% similarUnverifiedPreview failures can usually be grouped into five categories: missing content, character mismatch, timing conflict, mixing conflict, and ambiguous handoff.73% similarUnverifiedA practical method for determining whether retrieval has failed is to examine the retrieved document chunks in isolation: if a human also cannot find the correct answer within them, the problem lies in retrieval rather than the model.72% similarVerifiedFailure modes (e.g., {"error": ...}) should be explicitly defined and validated at the code layer, transforming drift from silent wrong answers into catchable exceptions.70% similar
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