{
  "annotation_id": "a4bf4d67-5363-4600-893d-37687ec7b395",
  "date_created": "2026-02-17T05:53:07.767000Z",
  "date_modified": "2026-02-17T05:53:07.767000Z",
  "file_hash": "ce00881bbbdef27bc7f73f09fb6e28ff6e3c3c9351e6c382c26887f5439c26ea",
  "private": false,
  "record": {
    "abstract": "Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has emerged as the predominant paradigm for grounding Large Language Model outputs in factual knowledge, effectively mitigating hallucinations. However, conventional RAG systems operate under a \"retrieve-always\" assumption, querying vector databases for every input regardless of query complexity. This static approach incurs substantial computational overhead and inference latency, particularly problematic for high-throughput production deployments. We introduce L-RAG (Lazy Retrieval-Augmented Generation), an adaptive framework that implements hierarchical context management through entropy-based gating. L-RAG employs a two-tier architecture: queries are first processed with a compact document summary, and expensive chunk retrieval is triggered only when the model\u0027s predictive entropy exceeds a calibrated threshold, signaling genuine uncertainty. Through experiments on SQuAD 2.0 (N=500) using the Phi-2 model, we demonstrate that L-RAG provides a tunable accuracy-efficiency trade-off: at a conservative threshold (tau=0.5), L-RAG achieves 78.2% accuracy, matching Standard RAG (77.8%), with 8% retrieval reduction; at a balanced threshold (tau=1.0), retrieval reduction increases to 26% with modest accuracy trade-off (76.0%). Latency analysis shows that L-RAG saves 80-210ms per query when retrieval latency exceeds 500ms. Analysis of entropy distributions reveals statistically significant separation (p \u003c 0.001) between correct predictions (H=1.72) and errors (H=2.20), validating entropy as a reliable uncertainty signal. L-RAG offers a practical, training-free approach toward more efficient RAG deployment, providing system architects with a configurable knob to balance accuracy and throughput requirements.",
    "arxiv_id": "2601.06551",
    "authors": [
      "Sergii Voloshyn"
    ],
    "categories": [
      "cs.IR",
      "cs.AI",
      "cs.CL"
    ],
    "license": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
    "title": "L-RAG: Balancing Context and Retrieval with Entropy-Based Lazy Loading",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.06551",
    "version": "v1"
  },
  "schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
  "source": {
    "execution_id": "c9210165-a3e8-48fa-8fb6-a86d6549b01d",
    "id": "arXiv Dataset",
    "type": "Model",
    "variant": "snapshot-2026-01-17",
    "version": "0.1.0"
  },
  "user_id": 1000002
}