The paradigm shift

The survey frames agentic RAG as a genuine paradigm shift rather than just another increment. By adding autonomous agents capable of dynamic decision-making, iterative reasoning, and adaptive retrieval, agentic RAG keeps the modularity of the earlier paradigms while overcoming their rigidity. The promise is to handle complex, multi-domain, multi-step tasks with better precision, and even to reduce latency through optimized workflows rather than brute-force querying.

The key mental shift to carry into the next chapters: in traditional RAG, retrieval is something that happens to the system (a fixed step). In agentic RAG, retrieval is something the system decides and controls.