Skip to content
Change language: EN
My learningAdd to Chrome
Track progress 0%

Lesson 8 4 min

Test what gets found

Before you rely on a knowledge base, see exactly which passages an agent or a workflow would get for a question.

Open the knowledge base and click Test search. It runs on this device and saves nothing. Type a question your documents should answer and click Search. Each passage shows a score, its source, chunk and page, and the matching words highlighted.

The Test search tab of the Product handbook knowledge base: a Question box with a question typed in and a Search button, and the Search as panel: Who's asking (Aria · default model), When to look things up, Passages, Search mode (Hybrid or Vector), Prefer different sources (MMR) and Rerank on this device. No search has been run yet.The Test search tab of the Product handbook knowledge base: a Question box with a question typed in and a Search button, and the Search as panel: Who's asking (Aria · default model), When to look things up, Passages, Search mode (Hybrid or Vector), Prefer different sources (MMR) and Rerank on this device. No search has been run yet.
Search mode

The cut-off line

A dashed line at 0.35 separates the passages an agent using When relevant would get from those it skips, which are dimmed.

Search like the reader

Under Search as, choose Who’s asking: Aria, an agent that uses this base, or a workflow RAG node. Set the policy and how many passages to return, compare Hybrid (keywords and meaning) with Vector (meaning only), and try Prefer different sources (MMR) for passages that differ from each other. A note explains the result for that reader, for example that a cloud model skips a Device only base.

Nothing useful?

  • Every passage is under the line: rephrase the question, or add a source that says it plainly.
  • The right document isn’t there: check its row on Sources; a scanned PDF with no text fails.
  • A cloud-built base returns nothing: searching it needs the provider’s key.

Key takeaways

  1. Passages under the dashed 0.35 line are dimmed, because When relevant skips them.
  2. Hybrid search mixes keywords and meaning; Vector is meaning only.
  3. Search as tests the way a given agent or node would search.