# Auto-RAG: Autonomous Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.19443 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19443/

## Key facts

- Cited by 43 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in RAG pipeline design and evaluation, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 38 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Nov 2024.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [RAG pipeline design and evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/rag/rag-pipeline-design-and-evaluation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [Think you have Solved Question Answering? Try ARC, the AI2 Reasoning Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05457/) (2018)
- [Dense Passage Retrieval for Open-Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04906/) (2020)
- [HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.09600/) (2018)
- [Qwen Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16609/) (2023)
- [TriviaQA: A Large Scale Distantly Supervised Challenge Dataset for Reading Comprehension](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.03551/) (2017)
- [Can a Suit of Armor Conduct Electricity? A New Dataset for Open Book Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02789/) (2018)
- [Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11511/) (2023)
- [Constructing A Multi-hop QA Dataset for Comprehensive Evaluation of Reasoning Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.01060/) (2020)
- [Text Embeddings by Weakly-Supervised Contrastive Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.03533/) (2022)
- [When Not to Trust Language Models: Investigating Effectiveness of Parametric and Non-Parametric Memories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10511/) (2022)
- [Atlas: Few-shot Learning with Retrieval Augmented Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.03299/) (2022)
- [Interleaving Retrieval with Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Knowledge-Intensive Multi-Step Questions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10509/) (2022)
- [RACE: Large-scale ReAding Comprehension Dataset From Examinations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04683/) (2017)
- [REPLUG: Retrieval-Augmented Black-Box Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12652/) (2023)
- [Active Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06983/) (2023)
- [Making Retrieval-Augmented Language Models Robust to Irrelevant Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01558/) (2023)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for AI-Generated Content: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.19473/) (2024)
- [Enhancing Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models with Iterative Retrieval-Generation Synergy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15294/) (2023)
- [Adaptive Chameleon or Stubborn Sloth: Revealing the Behavior of Large Language Models in Knowledge Conflicts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13300/) (2023)
- [SWAG: A Large-Scale Adversarial Dataset for Grounded Commonsense Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.05326/) (2018)
- [From Quantity to Quality: Boosting LLM Performance with Self-Guided Data Selection for Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12032/) (2023)
- [RECOMP: Improving Retrieval-Augmented LMs with Compression and Selective Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04408/) (2023)
- [Query Rewriting for Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14283/) (2023)
- [Corrective Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15884/) (2024)
- [Compressing Context to Enhance Inference Efficiency of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06201/) (2023)
- [Chain-of-Note: Enhancing Robustness in Retrieval-Augmented Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09210/) (2023)
- [FlashRAG: A Modular Toolkit for Efficient Retrieval-Augmented Generation Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.13576/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [Evaluating Memory in LLM Agents via Incremental Multi-Turn Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05257/) (2025)
- [Beyond Ten Turns: Unlocking Long-Horizon Agentic Search with Large-Scale Asynchronous RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07976/) (2025)
- [Deep Research Agents: A Systematic Examination And Roadmap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18096/) (2025)
- [Chain-of-Agents: End-to-End Agent Foundation Models via Multi-Agent Distillation and Agentic RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13167/) (2025)
- [Process vs. Outcome Reward: Which is Better for Agentic RAG Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14069/) (2025)
- [Chain-of-Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.14342/) (2025)
- [Atom-Searcher: Enhancing Agentic Deep Research via Fine-Grained Atomic Thought Reward](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12800/) (2025)
- [DeepDiver: Adaptive Search Intensity Scaling via Open-Web Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24332/) (2025)
- [Mind-Brush: Integrating Agentic Cognitive Search and Reasoning into Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01756/) (2026)
- [Benchmarking Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Chemistry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07671/) (2025)
- [R3-RAG: Learning Step-by-Step Reasoning and Retrieval for LLMs via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23794/) (2025)
- [Intrinsic Memory Agents: Heterogeneous Multi-Agent LLM Systems through Structured Contextual Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08997/) (2025)
- [Generative AI Act II: Test Time Scaling Drives Cognition Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13828/) (2025)
- [DynamicRAG: Leveraging Outputs of Large Language Model as Feedback for Dynamic Reranking in Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07233/) (2025)
- [Vendi-RAG: Adaptively Trading-Off Diversity And Quality Significantly Improves Retrieval Augmented Generation With LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.11228/) (2025)
- [ComposeRAG: A Modular and Composable RAG for Corpus-Grounded Multi-Hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00232/) (2025)
- [AirRAG: Autonomous Strategic Planning and Reasoning Steer Retrieval Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10053/) (2025)
- [C-3PO: Compact Plug-and-Play Proxy Optimization to Achieve Human-like Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06205/) (2025)
- [ARise: Towards Knowledge-Augmented Reasoning via Risk-Adaptive Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10893/) (2025)
- [CARL: Criticality-Aware Agentic Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04949/) (2025)
- [S-Path-RAG: Semantic-Aware Shortest-Path Retrieval Augmented Generation for Multi-Hop Knowledge Graph Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23512/) (2026)
- [Self-Critique Guided Iterative Reasoning for Multi-hop Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19112/) (2025)
- [MARS: Co-evolving Dual-System Deep Research via Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.04935/) (2025)
- [Test-time Scaling of LLMs: A Survey from A Subproblem Structure Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14772/) (2025)
- [SIRAG: Towards Stable and Interpretable RAG with A Process-Supervised Multi-Agent Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18167/) (2025)
- [G2-Reader: Dual Evolving Graphs for Multimodal Document QA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22055/) (2026)
- [Mitigating Hallucination in Financial Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Fine-Grained Knowledge Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.05723/) (2026)
- [A Reference Architecture for Agentic Hybrid Retrieval in Dataset Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16394/) (2026)
- [FLOWREADER: Min-Cost Flow Optimization for Multi-Modal Long Document Q&A](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.07235/) (2026)
- [TrustDataFilter:Leveraging Trusted Knowledge Base Data for More Effective Filtering of Unknown Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15714/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Iterative retrieval refers to the process in which the model continuously queries the retriever during generation to enhance the relevance of the retrieved knowledge, thereby improving the performance of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Existing work typically employs few-shot prompting or manually constructed rules to implement iterative retrieval. This introduces additional inference overhead and overlooks the remarkable reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs). In this paper, we introduce Auto-RAG, an autonomous iterative retrieval model centered on the LLM's powerful decision-making capabilities. Auto-RAG engages in multi-turn dialogues with the retriever, systematically planning retrievals and refining queries to acquire valuable knowledge. This process continues until sufficient external information is gathered, at which point the results are presented to the user. To this end, we develop a method for autonomously synthesizing reasoning-based decision-making instructions in iterative retrieval and fine-tuned the latest open-source LLMs. The experimental results indicate that Auto-RAG is capable of autonomous iterative interaction with the retriever, effectively leveraging the remarkable reasoning and decision-making abilities of LLMs, which lead to outstanding performance across six benchmarks. Further analysis reveals that Auto-RAG can autonomously adjust the number of iterations based on the difficulty of the questions and the utility of the retrieved knowledge, without requiring any human intervention. Moreover, Auto-RAG expresses the iterative retrieval process in natural language, enhancing interpretability while providing users with a more intuitive experiencefootnoteCode is available at urlhttps://github.com/ictnlp/Auto-RAG.