multi-hop-retrievallisted

# Multi-hop retrieval Single-shot retrieval answers questions whose answer sits in one place. Questions that require connecting two facts fail silently, returning passages relevant to the surface words and missing the connection entirely. ## Method 1. **Detect when one hop is insufficient.** Comparisons, causal chains, and questions containing an unresolved reference usually need decomposition rather than a bigger top-k. 2. **Decompose into answerable sub-questions.** Each one retrievable on its own, with the second often depending on the first's answer (see agent-plan-execute-replan). 3. **Feed each answer into the next query.** The point of hopping is that the intermediate result narrows the next search, which a parallel fan-out does not achieve. 4. **Cap the hops.** Two or three, then answer with what you have, because unbounded chains accumulate error and cost quickly. 5. **Carry provenance through every hop.** The final answer must cite the sources from each step, not only the last (see citation-grounding). 6. **Detect and stop on dead ends.** A hop that retrieves nothing relevant should end the chain with an honest partial answer rather than continuing on a guess. 7. **Verify the assembled chain.** The individual facts may be right and the connection wrong, which is a distinct failure worth checking (see agent-generate-and-verify). ## Boundaries Multi-hop multiplies latency and cost by the number of hops, so it suits questions