Is Implicit Knowledge Enough for LLMs? A RAG Approach for Tree-based Structures

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Gupte, Mihir, Giusto, Paolo, S, Ramesh
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Gupte, Mihir
Giusto, Paolo
S, Ramesh
author_facet Gupte, Mihir
Giusto, Paolo
S, Ramesh
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) are adept at generating responses based on information within their context. While this ability is useful for interacting with structured data like code files, another popular method, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), retrieves relevant documents to augment the model's in-context learning. However, it is not well-explored how to best represent this retrieved knowledge for generating responses on structured data, particularly hierarchical structures like trees. In this work, we propose a novel bottom-up method to linearize knowledge from tree-like structures (like a GitHub repository) by generating implicit, aggregated summaries at each hierarchical level. This approach enables the knowledge to be stored in a knowledge base and used directly with RAG. We then compare our method to using RAG on raw, unstructured code, evaluating the accuracy and quality of the generated responses. Our results show that while response quality is comparable across both methods, our approach generates over 68% fewer documents in the retriever, a significant gain in efficiency. This finding suggests that leveraging implicit, linearized knowledge may be a highly effective and scalable strategy for handling complex, hierarchical data structures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_10806
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Is Implicit Knowledge Enough for LLMs? A RAG Approach for Tree-based Structures
Gupte, Mihir
Giusto, Paolo
S, Ramesh
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Information Retrieval
Machine Learning
Large Language Models (LLMs) are adept at generating responses based on information within their context. While this ability is useful for interacting with structured data like code files, another popular method, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), retrieves relevant documents to augment the model's in-context learning. However, it is not well-explored how to best represent this retrieved knowledge for generating responses on structured data, particularly hierarchical structures like trees. In this work, we propose a novel bottom-up method to linearize knowledge from tree-like structures (like a GitHub repository) by generating implicit, aggregated summaries at each hierarchical level. This approach enables the knowledge to be stored in a knowledge base and used directly with RAG. We then compare our method to using RAG on raw, unstructured code, evaluating the accuracy and quality of the generated responses. Our results show that while response quality is comparable across both methods, our approach generates over 68% fewer documents in the retriever, a significant gain in efficiency. This finding suggests that leveraging implicit, linearized knowledge may be a highly effective and scalable strategy for handling complex, hierarchical data structures.
title Is Implicit Knowledge Enough for LLMs? A RAG Approach for Tree-based Structures
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Information Retrieval
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10806