Questions
34 of 46
1What is RAG and why is it preferred over fine-tuning for domain-specific knowledge in production applications?
2What are the core components of a RAG pipeline in LangChain — Document Loaders, Text Splitters, Embeddings, Vector Stores, Retrievers, and Chains?
3What is the difference between semantic search and keyword search and why does RAG rely on semantic similarity?
4What is an Embedding in the context of RAG — what does it represent and why is cosine similarity used to compare them?
5What is a Vector Store and how does it differ from a traditional relational or document database?
6What is the difference between a Retriever and a Vector Store in LangChain — why is the abstraction separation important?
7What is a Document object in LangChain — what are pageContent and metadata fields and why does metadata matter in RAG?
8What are Document Loaders in LangChain and how do you choose the right loader for PDFs, web pages, Notion, Google Drive, or SQL databases?
9What is the difference between RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter and CharacterTextSplitter — when would you use one over the other?
10What is chunk size and chunk overlap in text splitting — how do you decide the right values for your use case?
11How do you handle structured documents like tables, code blocks, or markdown files during the splitting phase to avoid breaking semantic meaning?
12How do you load and split documents lazily (streaming) to handle very large files without running out of memory?
13What is a SemanticChunker and how does it differ from fixed-size character-based splitting?
14How do you preserve and propagate source metadata (filename, page number, URL, timestamp) through the loading and splitting pipeline?
15How do you choose the right embedding model — what tradeoffs exist between OpenAI embeddings, Cohere, HuggingFace, and local models like nomic-embed?
16What is the difference between dense embeddings and sparse embeddings (BM25) — when would you combine both in a hybrid search?
17How do you handle embedding model upgrades in production — what happens to your existing vectors when you switch models?
18How do you efficiently batch embed a large corpus of documents without hitting rate limits or memory constraints?
19What are the tradeoffs between vector stores like Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma, pgvector, and FAISS — how do you choose for production?
20How do you implement namespace or tenant isolation in a vector store for a multi-tenant RAG application?
21How do you handle incremental updates to a vector store — adding, updating, and deleting documents without full re-indexing?
22What is HNSW indexing and why does it make approximate nearest neighbor search fast at scale?
23What is a similarity score threshold in retrieval and how do you use it to filter out low-confidence results?
24What is MMR (Maximal Marginal Relevance) retrieval and how does it balance relevance with diversity of results?
25What is a MultiQueryRetriever and how does it improve recall by generating multiple phrasings of the same question?
26What is Contextual Compression in LangChain retrieval and how does it reduce noise in retrieved chunks?
27What is a ParentDocumentRetriever — how does it index small chunks but return larger parent chunks to the LLM?
28What is HyDE (Hypothetical Document Embedding) and how does it improve retrieval for vague or abstract queries?
29What is Self-Query Retrieval and how does it allow the LLM to generate structured metadata filters alongside the semantic query?
30How do you implement hybrid search combining dense vector search with BM25 keyword search using EnsembleRetriever?
31What is a Re-ranker (cross-encoder) and where does it fit in the RAG pipeline after initial retrieval?
32What is the difference between Stuff, MapReduce, Refine, and MapRerank document chain strategies — when do you use each?
33How do you build a Conversational RAG chain that maintains chat history and reformulates follow-up questions into standalone queries?
34What is query decomposition and how do you break a complex multi-part question into sub-queries for better retrieval?
35How do you implement Step-Back Prompting in a RAG pipeline to improve retrieval for highly specific questions?
36What is CRAG (Corrective RAG) and how does it add a grading step to decide whether retrieved docs are relevant before answering?
37What is Self-RAG and how does the LLM decide when to retrieve, whether retrieved docs are relevant, and whether the answer is grounded?
38How do you implement a fallback strategy when retrieval returns no relevant documents — how do you avoid hallucination in this case?
39How do you implement RAG evaluation — what metrics like faithfulness, answer relevancy, and context recall do you measure using RAGAS?
40How do you detect and mitigate hallucination in RAG outputs — what role does citation and source grounding play?
41How do you build a citation system that maps each sentence in the LLM's answer back to the exact source chunk it came from?
42How do you handle multilingual RAG — embedding and retrieving documents in multiple languages for a global user base?
43How do you optimize retrieval latency in production — what caching, pre-fetching, or index optimization strategies do you apply?
44How do you implement access control at the retrieval layer — ensuring users only retrieve documents they are authorized to see?
45How do you handle long context RAG — when retrieved chunks exceed the LLM's context window, what strategies do you apply?
46How do you design a RAG pipeline with LangGraph — turning retrieval, grading, and generation into discrete stateful graph nodes?
langchainlangchain
Basics
Agents
Models
Messages
Tools
Middleware
Memory
MCP
Multi Agents
RAG
Context Engineering
Human in the loop
34 / 46

What is query decomposition and how do you break a complex multi-part question into sub-queries for better retrieval?

Query decomposition is a technique that breaks a complex multi-part question into simpler sub‑queries, which are then processed sequentially or in parallel, improving retrieval accuracy by tackling each sub‑question individually.

Complex questions often require information from multiple sources or involve several conditions. Query decomposition splits the original question into smaller, more manageable sub‑queries. These sub‑queries can be executed sequentially (using the answer from one sub‑query to inform the next) or in parallel (aggregating independent answers). The approach mimics how a human would break down a complex problem, leading to more precise retrieval and better final answers.[reference:4][reference:5]

Implementing Query Decomposition with LangChain
Implementation Patterns
  1. 1

    Sequential Decomposition: Sub‑questions are processed one after another, with each answer informing the next. Suitable for logical workflows.

  2. 2

    Parallel Decomposition: Independent sub‑questions are processed simultaneously, reducing latency. Ideal for factual comparisons.

  3. 3

    Agent-based Decomposition: Use a LangGraph agent to dynamically decide the decomposition and execution plan.

  4. 4

    Self‑ask with Search: The LLM recursively asks itself sub‑questions and searches for answers until the original question is resolved.

Difficulty: 5/10
Topics: query decomposition, LangChain retrieval, sub‑query generation

Scenario Questions

0-2 years experience
  1. 1

    Suppose you're building a simple FAQ bot with LangChain and a user asks, 'What are the pricing tiers and how do I upgrade my plan?' How would you decompose that question into sub‑queries before sending them to the vector store?

  2. 2

    If you feed the whole multi‑part question directly into a single retriever and get no results, what steps would you take to break it down and improve retrieval?

2-5 years experience
  1. 1

    You added query decomposition to your LangChain pipeline, but after deployment you notice that responses sometimes miss the second part of the user's request. Walk me through how you would debug the decomposition logic.

  2. 2

    When deciding whether to split a question at punctuation versus using an LLM to generate sub‑queries, what trade‑offs would you consider for latency and relevance?

5-8 years experience
  1. 1

    Design a LangChain component that automatically decomposes arbitrary user questions into optimal sub‑queries for a hybrid retriever (vector + keyword). What factors would you use to decide the number and granularity of sub‑queries, and how would you handle failures?

  2. 2

    At scale, your decomposition step becomes a bottleneck. How would you redesign the system to maintain throughput while ensuring each sub‑query remains semantically meaningful?

8+ years experience
  1. 1

    Your organization is migrating from a monolithic retrieval system to a micro‑service architecture that includes a dedicated query‑decomposition service used by multiple LangChain applications. What architectural patterns would you employ to ensure consistency, versioning, and observability across teams?

  2. 2

    Consider a legacy knowledge base that mixes structured data and unstructured docs. How would you evolve the query‑decomposition strategy to support both types without breaking existing clients, and what migration plan would you propose?

Follow-up Questions

  • ❓Can you walk me through a concrete example of a decomposition rule you would implement?
  • ❓How would you evaluate whether your decomposition is improving retrieval quality?
  • ❓What would you do if one of the sub‑queries returns no relevant documents?