LLM-Wiki Retrieval Architect

Goal

Choose the smallest retrieval tier that solves the user's measured retrieval failure while preserving inspectable Markdown, provenance, access filters and rebuildable indexes.

Use references/docs/16-retrieval-architecture.md as the reference playbook for detailed technology comparisons, metadata schema, GraphRAG lane design, evaluation gates, security controls and source URLs to re-check.

When to use

• The wiki's search misses relevant pages even though the content exists (lexical miss, stale index, poor ranking, thin context, or multi-hop miss).
• You need to pick or size a retrieval tier (grep-only, lexical index, hybrid semantic search, reranker, parent/context retrieval, graph-aware retrieval, or product storage) for a Markdown/wiki corpus.
• You must define index contracts, metadata/access filters, chunking policy, or graph edge schema for a new or growing wiki.
• Retrieval needs to respect tenant, sensitivity, or review-state boundaries before rollout.
• Whole-stack local-first tooling choices belong in llm-wiki-local-first-stack; use this skill once retrieval specifically is the bottleneck.

Inputs