Shengbo Gong
2026
Beyond Chunks and Graphs: Retrieval-Augmented Generation through Triplet-Driven Thinking
Shengbo Gong | Xianfeng Tang | Qi He | Carl Yang | Wei Jin
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
Shengbo Gong | Xianfeng Tang | Qi He | Carl Yang | Wei Jin
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is critical for reducing hallucinations and incorporating external knowledge into Large Language Models (LLMs). However, advanced RAG systems face a trade-off between performance and efficiency. Multi-round RAG approaches achieve strong reasoning but incur excessive LLM calls and token costs, while Graph RAG methods suffer from computationally expensive, error-prone graph construction and retrieval redundancy. To address these challenges, we propose T2RAG, a novel framework that operates on a simple, graph-free knowledge base of atomic triplets. T2RAG leverages an LLM to decompose questions into searchable triplets with placeholders, which it then iteratively resolves by retrieving evidence from the triplet database. Empirical results show that T2RAG significantly outperforms state-of-the-art multi-round and Graph RAG methods, achieving an average performance gain of up to 11% across six datasets while reducing retrieval costs by up to 45%.