How to debug Retrieval for RAG YouTube video by Hamel Husain

RAG... To debug must you bedug?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9SZ...

What is psuedo-relevance feedback? After retrieving BM25 or any ranked search results you might not realize it but you have new information about the…

Pseudo relevance feedback: Use the top K first pass results to learn / enhance the original query

Another classic IR concept getting rediscovered right now

softwaredoug.com/blog/2026/04...

Your tech career in the AI age (Q&A w/ a recruiter) It's scary out there. Skills we thought would be timeless are being brought into question. We're all being asked to relearn our career as agentic coding continues to eat software development. Come pa...

In a few hours

maven.com/p/38ec62/you...

Session vs Query based search evals To evaluate search we typically build a judgment list We transform clickstream data into evaluation data This labels a result…

Session vs Query based eval in search

You don't need to derive judgments from clickstream data, just use the session directly as a label

softwaredoug.com/blog/2026/03...

The tests are the code now With AI coding, tests suddenly becomes the most important part of our code to maintain

The tests are the code now

softwaredoug.com/blog/2026/03...

Can BM25 be a probability? BM25 odds vs probabilities: a tour of Bayesian BM25 and what it means for hybrid search calibration.

Bayesian BM25 explorations - can we make BM25 a probability?

softwaredoug.com/blog/2026/03...

Literally like an hour to get into this class! :)

maven.com/search-schoo...

Agentic Search: What's the big deal? Agents rewire how search works. Historically search interprets a few short keywords. These represent a complex paragraph-length information need. We've built enormous complexity to understand, parse, ...

Our Exploring Modern AI Search series continues today, with me talking about Agentic Search!

maven.com/p/e77b4e/age...

Optimizing Search & Data Processing with Self-hosted SLMs In this Lightning Lesson, Daniel will share a preview of Superlinked Inference Engine - an open source software for self-hosting Small Language Models in your own cloud. Cut 95%+ of your managed LLM A...

Tomorrow one of the most popular speakers Trey and I have on Maven

Deploying small language models to help with search relevance

maven.com/p/de2d33/opt...

AI-Powered Search: Modern Retrieval for Humans & Agents by Trey Grainger and Doug Turnbull on Maven Learn the latest AI Search skills with the authors of "AI-Powered Search"

AI Powered Search - March edition - coming up in little more than 2 weeks

maven.com/search-schoo...

Personalized Relevance with VLMs and Sparse Vectors In today's data explosion, delivering personalized search results at scale is crucial. This talk introduces sparse tensors for compact representations, shows how VLMs mimic human visual processing to ...

Tomorrow Tuesday Trey and I host Piotr Kobziakowski who will be discussing personalization with sparse vector retrieval and visual language models

maven.com/p/b5ee84/per...

Cheat at Search with Agents by Doug Turnbull on Maven Rethink search to put tireless agents at work for human users

First class starts today, then prices go up to $1600 for late entrants at 12:30 PM ET

maven.com/softwaredoug...

Avoiding expensive AI surprises with LiteLLM LLMs have lowered the barrier to experimentation, but raised the risk of silent, unbounded cost. For individual engineers and small teams, the gap between “enterprise best practices” and day-to-day re...

Thursday I'm hosting Ewan Nisbet who will share his learnings using LiteLLM to control costs

maven.com/p/e28c57/avo...

A digital illustration of a groundhog all dressed up in fancy morning dress: big shiny top hat, cutaway coat with tails, bow tie, waistcoat with watch chain, pinstriped pants and shoes with spats. He’s standing on a hillside covered in yellowish green grass. It’ The sky is gray and hazy and there’s a bare tree in the distance. There are patches of snow on the ground and crocuses coming up. He’s casting a long shadow forward within which is lettering reading ‘Maybe it will happen today’.

I'm up for naming and shaming companies/orgs. with ample $$$$$ who have created a safety hazard w/ untouched sidewalks

* The Flats on West Main
* Bank of America on the Corner
* UVa, who mostly did great, for RBB btwn Grove & King Sts. still untouched

Who/where else?

I started submitting snow removal violations on the My Cville app this morning for the first time this week. If kids are going to go to school on Monday we need all these sidewalks cleared.

A parenting lesson I forget/relearn over and over:. When I spend time outdoors, my kids (on average) spend more time outdoors.

We need free range parents to have free range kids.

Cheat at Search with Agents by Doug Turnbull on Maven Rethink search to put tireless agents at work for human users

Signup here

maven.com/softwaredoug...

Cheat at Search with Agents starts NEXT WEEK. Prices go up Monday

Will agents replace search teams? (a discussion) YouTube video by Doug Turnbull

Great chat with Daniel Tunkelang on Agentic Search

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGnW...

Doug Turnbull I share search tips, blog articles, and free events I'm hosting about the search+retreval industry, vector databases, information retrieval and more.

softwaredoug.kit.com

I love models implemented in spreadsheets. Fun things coming on the newsletter

What happens when housing is cheap in red states, but blue states restrict it

Coding becomes like writing.

It's a skill. But its accessible to everyone. Very few people do it directly as a job, but everyone does it as part of their job.

Learn about a specific market / problem space and make coding (and writing) a part of your job.

Cheat at Search with Agents by Doug Turnbull on Maven Rethink search to put tireless agents at work for human users

I'm trying to wrap my head around agents impact on search. Join me as we explore together.

Feb 2nd, prices go up. Feb 9th last day to signup

maven.com/softwaredoug...

Will agents replace search teams? A discussion Exhilarating and terrifying - that's AIs potential on the search industry. We all feel it. Can we plan for it? For our career? For our teams? Depending who you ask either nothing or everything is cha...

Friday Daniel Tunkenlang and I will host a discussion with an intentionally hyperbolic title

Hope to see you there!

maven.com/p/66212a/wil...

There were very few search rerankers specifically for e-commerce queries.

Until now, that is.

RexRerankers by Walmart Tech MLEs is a suite of 5 SOTA rerankers ranging from 17M to 0.6B parameters.

Details in 🧵:

Get Daily Search Tips 📬 Get practical search and RAG tips delivered to your inbox

softwaredoug.com/daily-search...

Reminder I do daily search tips via email

Ralph, too, needs a test train split When we think of AI coding as ML modeling, we enable AI to solve deeper, more difficult, and less black and white problems.

AI Coding needs test train splits

softwaredoug.com/blog/2026/01...