Hybrid Search Implementation
Patterns for combining vector similarity and keyword-based search.
When to Use This Skill
- Building RAG systems with improved recall
- Combining semantic understanding with exact matching
- Handling queries with specific terms (names, codes)
- Improving search for domain-specific vocabulary
- When pure vector search misses keyword matches
Core Concepts
1. Hybrid Search Architecture
2. Fusion Methods
Templates and detailed worked examples
Full template library and detailed worked examples live in references/details.md. Read that file when you need the concrete templates.
Best Practices
Do's
- Tune weights empirically - Test on your data
- Use RRF for simplicity - Works well without tuning
- Add reranking - Significant quality improvement
- Log both scores - Helps with debugging
- A/B test - Measure real user impact
Don'ts
- Don't assume one size fits all - Different queries need different weights
- Don't skip keyword search - Handles exact matches better
- Don't over-fetch - Balance recall vs latency
- Don't ignore edge cases - Empty results, single word queries
