Yep. Have definitely been replacing RAG solutions with search+feed the context window instead lately as well.
What does that mean? In what way does "search and feed" differ from "retrieve and augment?" Those are practically synonyms to me - is it about tool use vs prompt crafting?
Correct. RAG is a general term as you describe, but it has become inextricably linked with vector databases in the minds of a lot of people, to the extent that GP and even the blog post we're discussing use RAG specifically to mean the use of a vector database after chunking input to create embeddings.
I agree with you that RAG should be a generic term that is agnostic to the method of retrieval and augmentation. But at the moment, in a lot of people's minds, it specifically means using a vector database.
I’m not an expert here, but isn’t “search and feed the context window” exactly what RAG is?
Like the other comment already said, the search is still Retrieval, and putting it into the context window is Augmenting, and the LLM request leads to the Generation. A.k.a. RAG.