{
  "id": "active-retrieval",
  "code": "PTL-0136",
  "term": "Active Retrieval",
  "aliases": [
    "FLARE",
    "forward-looking active retrieval"
  ],
  "category": "retrieval-tools",
  "definition": "Active retrieval augmented generation decides during generation when and what to retrieve; in FLARE, the model drafts the next sentence and, if it contains low-confidence tokens, uses that draft as a search query and regenerates the sentence with the retrieved evidence.",
  "description": "Retrieving once before generation suits short answers but not long-form text whose information needs change as it is written. Triggering retrieval only on uncertainty limits extra calls to the points where the model is likely to be wrong.",
  "example": null,
  "broader": [
    "retrieval-augmented-generation"
  ],
  "narrower": [],
  "related": [
    "log-probabilities",
    "self-rag",
    "agentic-rag"
  ],
  "introduced": 2023,
  "added": "2026-10-10",
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "Active Retrieval Augmented Generation",
      "authors": "Jiang et al.",
      "year": 2023,
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.06983"
    }
  ],
  "url": "https://protologue.com/t/active-retrieval/",
  "citation": "Protologue. (2026). Active Retrieval. In Protologue: A Taxonomy of Prompting and LLM Techniques (v1.4.0, PTL-0136). https://protologue.com/t/active-retrieval/"
}