Decide on Retrieval Based on Reasoning Steps

bigaiguy · x · 2026-07-11

This proposes Retrieval Timing Control: instead of retrieving just once at the start of a task, the system should evaluate at every reasoning step whether additional context is needed.

The agent first asks itself, "Do I have enough information to answer this sub-question?" If yes, it skips retrieval; if no, it initiates a new search. The author claims this single optimization reduced average token usage on multi-hop questions by 41%.

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