What is RAG: how to chat with your documents using AI
Understand what RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) is and how it lets you ask questions and get sourced answers from your own documents.
Ever wished you could ask "what's the termination notice in this contract?" and get the answer instantly, with the source? That's exactly what RAG enables. Here's what it is, without the jargon.
What RAG means
RAG stands for retrieval-augmented generation. Instead of the AI answering only from what it "remembers", it first retrieves the relevant passages from your documents and then generates the answer based on them. The result is an answer grounded in your material — not a guess.
How content becomes an answer
- Each document is split into small passages.
- Each passage becomes an embedding — a numeric representation of its meaning.
- When you ask, your question also becomes an embedding and the system finds the most similar passages.
- The AI reads those passages and answers citing the source.
That's why search works by meaning: you can ask for "late fee" and find a clause that says "penalty for default", even without using the same words.
Why this matters for your company
Without RAG, AI can make up (hallucinate) answers. With RAG, every answer points to the document that backs it — essential for contracts, legal cases and invoices, where mistakes are costly.
Try it with your documents
In DocsSmart, every uploaded document is indexed automatically and available in the AI chat, which answers citing the source. Create your account and ask your files your first question.
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