# TOBUGraph: Knowledge Graph-Based Retrieval for Enhanced LLM Performance Beyond RAG

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.05447 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05447/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Knowledge-graph and structured-knowledge RAG, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 16 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Dec 2024.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [Knowledge-graph and structured-knowledge RAG](https://mlsanity.com/rag/knowledge-graph-and-structured-knowledge-rag/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [Dense Passage Retrieval for Open-Domain Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04906/) (2020)
- [REALM: Retrieval-Augmented Language Model Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08909/) (2020)
- [Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11511/) (2023)
- [From Local to Global: A Graph RAG Approach to Query-Focused Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16130/) (2024)
- [Knowledge Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.02320/) (2020)
- [Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08921/) (2024)
- [RAGTruth: A Hallucination Corpus for Developing Trustworthy Retrieval-Augmented Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00396/) (2023)
- [Graph Chain-of-Thought: Augmenting Large Language Models by Reasoning on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07103/) (2024)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Natural Language Processing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13193/) (2024)
- [Is Semantic Chunking Worth the Computational Cost?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13070/) (2024)
- [Adaptive Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Conversational Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21712/) (2024)
- [Scaling Down to Scale Up: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Replacing OpenAI's LLM with Open Source SLMs in Production](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14972/) (2023)
- [CoTKR: Chain-of-Thought Enhanced Knowledge Rewriting for Complex Knowledge Graph Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.19753/) (2024)
- [A Unified Temporal Knowledge Graph Reasoning Model Towards Interpolation and Extrapolation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18106/) (2024)
- [Generative Entity-to-Entity Stance Detection with Knowledge Graph Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01467/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [GAM-RAG: Gain-Adaptive Memory for Evolving Retrieval in Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.01783/) (2026)
- [Enhancing Software Engineering Through Closed-Loop Memory Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.05646/) (2026)
- [PixARG: Pixel-Asynchronous Retrieval-Augmented Diffusion for Fast and Realistic Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14713/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is one of the leading and most widely used techniques for enhancing LLM retrieval capabilities, but it still faces significant limitations in commercial use cases. RAG primarily relies on the query-chunk text-to-text similarity in the embedding space for retrieval and can fail to capture deeper semantic relationships across chunks, is highly sensitive to chunking strategies, and is prone to hallucinations. To address these challenges, we propose TOBUGraph, a graph-based retrieval framework that first constructs the knowledge graph from unstructured data dynamically and automatically. Using LLMs, TOBUGraph extracts structured knowledge and diverse relationships among data, going beyond RAG's text-to-text similarity. Retrieval is achieved through graph traversal, leveraging the extracted relationships and structures to enhance retrieval accuracy, eliminating the need for chunking configurations while reducing hallucination. We demonstrate TOBUGraph's effectiveness in TOBU, a real-world application in production for personal memory organization and retrieval. Our evaluation using real user data demonstrates that TOBUGraph outperforms multiple RAG implementations in both precision and recall, significantly improving user experience through improved retrieval accuracy.