Cascade Retrieval: A 15-Year-Old IR Trick Fixed My Design Review Agent
Series: Classic Theory Meets Agent Practice (Part 1) TL;DR: A design review agent needs to find every issue AND avoid false positives. One agent can’t do both. Borrowing cascade retrieval from information retrieval, a 15-year-old method, I split it into two: a Recall Pass that casts a wide net, and a Precision Pass that filters strictly. Real defects get caught earlier, and the risk of rework during development drops. This series is about one thing: how classic theoretical frameworks directly guide AI agent engineering. The first post starts with cascade retrieval, a 15-year-old method from information retrieval (IR), and the much older Recall vs. Precision tradeoff it sits on top of. The 1966 Cranfield II experiments proved these two goals fight each other. Applying that old problem’s newer solution to design review made a striking difference. ...