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Dictionary

Chunk Size

The length of text segments stored in a vector index.

1 min readupdated 2026-07-04

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Chunk size trades off recall and precision. Small chunks (200-400 tokens) return tight, on-topic snippets but lose context; large chunks (800-1500) keep context but dilute similarity scores. The length of text segments stored in a vector index.

The length of text segments stored in a vector index. Chunk size trades off recall and precision. Small chunks (200-400 tokens) return tight, on-topic snippets but lose context; large chunks (800-1500) keep context but dilute similarity scores. In practice: A legal RAG uses 500-token chunks with 100-token overlap so clauses stay whole.
Definition
Chunk size trades off recall and precision. Small chunks (200-400 tokens) return tight, on-topic snippets but lose context; large chunks (800-1500) keep context but dilute similarity scores.
Example
A legal RAG uses 500-token chunks with 100-token overlap so clauses stay whole.
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What is Chunk Size?

Chunk size trades off recall and precision. Small chunks (200-400 tokens) return tight, on-topic snippets but lose context; large chunks (800-1500) keep context but dilute similarity scores.

What is an example of Chunk Size?

A legal RAG uses 500-token chunks with 100-token overlap so clauses stay whole.

Why does Chunk Size matter?

The length of text segments stored in a vector index.

What should I learn after Chunk Size?

Open the related workflows and prompts further down this page: they show how this idea is applied in a real task, step by step.

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Related concepts

The vocabulary this page depends on.

  • →Retrieval

    Selecting the most relevant chunks for a query before generation.

  • →RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

    Inject external knowledge into an LLM at query time.

  • →Agentic RAG

    RAG where an agent decides what to retrieve, when, and from which source — instead of a single static query.

  • →Embedding

    A numerical vector representation of text, image or audio that captures meaning for similarity search.

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Related workflows

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Related tool stacks

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