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85f900d | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 | # Phase 2 β Hybrid Retrieval Engine
**Status:** β
Complete | **Tests:** 33/33 passed | **Date:** March 2026
---
## Overview
Phase 2 builds the retrieval pipeline β VoiceVault's technical differentiator. Instead of simple vector search (which most RAG tutorials use), VoiceVault implements hybrid BM25 + dense vector retrieval with Reciprocal Rank Fusion, cross-encoder reranking, and diversity filtering.
**Why hybrid retrieval matters:** The 2026 MDPI systematic review of 63 enterprise RAG deployments found that 80.5% still use single-mode retrieval, missing the 20β30% recall improvement that hybrid search provides.
---
## Files Created
| File | Purpose |
|------|---------|
| `voicevault/retrieval/bm25_retriever.py` | rank_bm25 keyword search against persisted index |
| `voicevault/retrieval/vector_retriever.py` | ChromaDB cosine similarity search |
| `voicevault/retrieval/hybrid_retriever.py` | RRF merge + cross-encoder + diversity filter |
| `voicevault/retrieval/context_builder.py` | Formats chunks into LLM prompt context string |
| `tests/test_phase2.py` | 33 tests: retrieval correctness, RRF math, diversity, context |
---
## Module Deep-Dives
### 1. BM25Retriever
Loads the `bm25.pkl` serialized index (built by IndexBuilder) and scores all chunks against the query using BM25Okapi.
**Key behaviors:**
- Zero-score results (no term overlap) are excluded β returns only meaningful matches
- Results sorted descending by BM25 score
- Returns empty list gracefully if index doesn't exist (no documents ingested)
- `reload()` method forces re-read from disk after a new ingest (used by the KB manager)
### 2. VectorRetriever
Encodes the query with `all-MiniLM-L6-v2` (same model as ingestion) and queries ChromaDB with cosine similarity.
**Score conversion:**
ChromaDB returns cosine *distance* (0=identical, 2=opposite). The retriever converts to similarity score: `vector_score = max(0.0, 1.0 - distance)`. This makes the score range [0, 1] where 1 = perfect match.
### 3. HybridRetriever (Core)
**Full pipeline:**
```
query β _expand_query() β [q1, q2, q3]
β BM25 search Γ 3 queries β merge best scores per chunk_id
β Vector search Γ 3 queries β merge best scores per chunk_id
β _rrf_merge() β {chunk_id: rrf_score}
β sort by rrf_score, take top-20
β _rerank() with CrossEncoder β sort by rerank_score
β _diversity_filter() β max 2 chunks per (source_file, page_number)
β return top-5 as list[RetrievalResult]
```
**RRF Formula (verified in test):**
```python
rrf_score(chunk) = Ξ£_method 1 / (60 + rank_in_method)
```
- k=60 is the standard value from the Cormack 2009 RRF paper
- A chunk ranked #1 in both methods scores: 2/61 β 0.0328
- A chunk ranked #5 in both methods scores: 2/65 β 0.0308
- A chunk ranked #1 in BM25 and #5 in vector scores: 1/61 + 1/65 β 0.0317
Test `test_rrf_chunk_in_both_lists_gets_higher_score` and `test_rrf_score_formula` verify the mathematics exactly.
**Cross-encoder reranking:**
The `ms-marco-MiniLM-L12-v2` model (33MB) reads `(query, chunk_text)` pairs together β this joint attention dramatically improves relevance scoring over bi-encoder similarity. The cross-encoder is run only on the top-20 RRF candidates (not all indexed chunks) for speed.
**Diversity filter:**
Caps at `cfg.max_chunks_per_page = 2` chunks from the same `(source_file, page_number)` pair. This prevents the final context from being dominated by a single dense page.
**Multi-KB support:**
HybridRetriever accepts `kb_names: list[str]`. It runs BM25 + vector search against all selected KBs in a single `retrieve()` call and merges results before RRF. This enables cross-KB queries in Phase 5.
### 4. ContextBuilder
Formats the top-k RetrievalResult objects into a structured context string:
```
[Source: report.pdf, p.3 | Section: Results]
The model achieved 94.2% accuracy...
[Source: methods.pdf, p.7 | Section: Setup]
We used a 10,000 sample dataset...
```
Also builds the `citation_map: list[Citation]` β each Citation corresponds to one source block, ordered by citation index. The LLM is told to cite using `[Source: filename, p.N]` markers. The CitationInjector (Phase 4) will map these markers back to the Citation objects for the UI panel.
Conversation history (last 5 turns) is prepended to the context string, enabling follow-up question handling.
---
## Test Highlights
**RRF Mathematics (`TestRRFMerge`):**
- `test_rrf_score_formula`: Verifies 1/61 + 1/61 = 2/61 to 9 decimal places
- `test_rrf_chunk_in_both_lists_gets_higher_score`: Core correctness property
- `test_rrf_higher_rank_gets_lower_score`: Monotonicity property
**Security (no dedicated security test β retrieval is read-only):**
- BM25 pickle loaded only from `cfg.kb_bm25_path(kb_name)` β never from user input
- ChromaDB queried with pre-computed embeddings β no raw query text passed to the DB
---
## Progress Tracker Update
| Phase | Status | Tests | Docs |
|-------|--------|-------|------|
| Phase 0 β Foundation | β
Done | β
58/58 | β
Done |
| Phase 1 β Ingestion | β
Done | β
46/46 | β
Done |
| **Phase 2 β Retrieval** | β
Done | β
33/33 | β
Done |
| Phase 3 β ASR | β¬ Next | β¬ | β¬ |
| Phase 4 β Generation | β¬ | β¬ | β¬ |
| Phase 5 β UI & Access | β¬ | β¬ | β¬ |
|