RE
RAG Explainer Keyword vs Vector
[CMP] Keyword vs Vector

Keyword misses, meaning finds

Policy sentence: “Covered providers: City General and St. Jude’s Medical Center.” You search for “Hospitals”.

How it works

  1. Keyword match: same letters only — “Hospitals” never hits “Medical Center”.
  2. Vector match: same meaning, even with different letters.
  3. That’s why RAG Search uses fingerprints, not Ctrl+F.
Mode: Keyword (Ctrl+F)
Keyword
Vector (Meaning)

Your Query

Fingerprint: —

Result

✘ 0 hits — “Medical Center” not equal to “Hospitals”
Receptionist analogy: “Is there a doctor?” → “No, only Physicians.” Literal vs semantic. Vector search bridges it.

Back to the pipeline

Meaning beats letters — that's why Search ranks fingerprints, not spellings. Back to Search [06/08] →

For Builders

Keyword = string equality. Vector = cosine(query,“Medical Center”)=0.99. Encoder maps synonyms near each other.