Overview › 8Retrieval › c.Ranking results

Ranking results

Return what is relevant and trustworthy. Nothing lives here yet.

8.b.i

Tune the search tool: snippets, enough results, retries, reformulation, filters, source quality

Make the search tool return what the model needs to choose what to open (a snippet per result, not just titles; five or more results; a full-document reader beside truncated search), retry failed searches, and reformulate when a query returns little (start broad, then narrow; use the corpus's own terms) rather than retrying it verbatim.

Retrieval › Querying precisely
Mixed qualityMixed cost

Tier 2 · reliability · changes knowledge access · retrieval, web research agents · 8 sources, 3 measured
9.a.ii

Verify citations claim by claim for factual support

Extract claim-citation pairs deterministically, then check each: the link resolves, the source is relevant, and the source actually supports the claim.

Verification › Checking externally
Better qualityLower cost

Tier 3 · tuning · changes control flow, knowledge access · web research, retrieval agents · 8 sources, 5 measured

Try it for yourself

Paste this into Claude Code, or any coding agent, in your agent's repo to check it for these optimizations.

Read these agent optimizations (Retrieval: Ranking results), each with the signs that it applies:
- 8.b.i Tune the search tool: snippets, enough results, retries, reformulation, filters, source quality: https://mahalsystems.ai/aot/optimizations/tune-search-tool.md
- 9.a.ii Verify citations claim by claim for factual support: https://mahalsystems.ai/aot/optimizations/verify-citations.md
Then check whether any of them applies to the agent in this repository. Look for each one's signs under "When it applies" in its code, prompts and tools, and in any traces or eval results you can find. Tell me which apply, strongest first, with what you found for each. Don't change anything yet.

Ranking results

See also

Tune the search tool: snippets, enough results, retries, reformulation, filters, source quality

Verify citations claim by claim for factual support

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