# hoBIT: A Profile-Aware Retrieval-Augmented Chatbot for University Academic Advising

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.26604 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.26604/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Agentic RAG, agents and memory, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 13 of its 20 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Aug 2026.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [Agentic RAG, agents and memory](https://mlsanity.com/rag/agentic-rag-agents-and-memory/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [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)
- [From Local to Global: A Graph RAG Approach to Query-Focused Summarization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16130/) (2024)
- [Passage Re-ranking with BERT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.04085/) (2019)
- [Precise Zero-Shot Dense Retrieval without Relevance Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10496/) (2022)
- [PersonaRAG: Enhancing Retrieval-Augmented Generation Systems with User-Centric Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09394/) (2024)
- [Toward Multi-Session Personalized Conversation: A Large-Scale Dataset and Hierarchical Tree Framework for Implicit Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07018/) (2025)
- [CoPL: Collaborative Preference Learning for Personalizing LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01658/) (2025)
- [FaST: Feature-aware Sampling and Tuning for Personalized Preference Alignment with Limited Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04698/) (2025)
- [SpiritRAG: A Q&A System for Religion and Spirituality in the United Nations Archive](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04395/) (2025)
- [Similarity = Value? Consultation Value Assessment and Alignment for Personalized Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14437/) (2025)
- [MedTutor: A Retrieval-Augmented LLM System for Case-Based Medical Education](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.06979/) (2026)
- [Marcel: A Lightweight and Open-Source Conversational Agent for University Student Support](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13937/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In university academic advising, identical questions can require different answers depending on a student's department, admission cohort, and degree program, causing profile-blind retrievers to surface plausible but inapplicable evidence. We present proFILL, a method for transforming hoBIT, our college's current rule-based advising chatbot, into a profile-aware retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) system. Rather than requiring a complete user profile upfront, proFILL progressively acquires only the profile attributes needed for each query, guided by both the query intent and the initially retrieved evidence, and uses them to condition retrieval over a profile-aware index. Extensive experiments and a human preference study show that proFILL outperforms diverse RAG baselines, is preferred by target users, and remains effective with open-weight models for cost-effective on-premise deployment.