In-Context Retrieval

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Overview

In-context retrieval examines how language models locate and use relevant information from prompts, long documents, conversation histories, or memory. Approaches include retrieving and organizing examples or documents, explicit search and evidence-copying, and changes to attention, recurrent memory, or positional encodings that help models access information. Systems are tested on tasks such as long-context needle retrieval, document question answering, multi-hop reasoning, and agent memory. A central challenge is that longer contexts do not guarantee reliable, query-relevant retrieval: models may miss facts or retrieve evidence without improving answer accuracy.

Latest papers

CardsList

29 papers7 papers in the last four weeks, against 2 the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Competing Learning in Hybrid Architectures

    Oct 19, 2026Xingyu Shen, Yingfa Chen, Ziqing Qiao +3Hybrid Language ModelsHybrid Attention

    Department of Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

  2. Beyond State Capacity: Why Retrieval Breaks in Mamba

    Oct 14, 2026Nir Yarden, Amit Ben-Artzy, Roy SchwartzIn-Context RetrievalSelective SSMs

    The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

  3. Do Personalized LLMs Need the Whole Conversation? Matching the Full History with Only 5% of Its Text via Relevance-Filtered Context

    Oct 10, 2026Erika Hayashi, Andrew ShinLLM Context ManagementConversational Memory

    Keio University

  4. RPTune: Learned Context Curation for LLM Catalog Search

    Oct 1, 2026Chuxuan Hu, Hejie Cui, Norman Huang +3In-Context RetrievalLLM Fine-Tuning

    Google · University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  5. The Geometry of Contextual Relations: Language Models Address Facts by Order of Mention

    Oct 1, 2026Yufa ZhouIn-Context RetrievalFactual Knowledge in Language Models

    Duke University

  6. Shifting Mechanisms: How Positional Encoding Choice Shapes In-Context Retrieval

    Sep 29, 2026Eric Enouen, Sainyam GalhotraIn-Context RetrievalSemantic Search

    Cornell University

  7. DreamingGoose: Staged Distillation from Autoregressive Transformers to Bidirectional Recurrent Diffusion Language Models

    Sep 28, 2026Julian Boesch, Andrew Wee, Alexander StranzlIn-Context RetrievalRecurrent Transformers

    Purdue University · Obit Research · State University of New York at Stony Brook.

  8. MUCnoHARM@GermEval Shared Task 2026: Retrieval-based In-Context Learning for Defamatory Offences, and Where It Falls Short

    Sep 9, 2026Kristin Gnadt, Maximilian Meidinger, Matthias AßenmacherLegal NLPIn-Context Retrieval

    Central Office for Information Technology in the Security Sector (ZITiS), Munich, Germany · Department of Statistics, LMU Munich, Germany · Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML), Germany

  9. What Attention Recalls and Recurrence Controls in Hybrid Language Models

    Sep 3, 2026Kirill Afendulev, Alexey Dontsov, Elena Tutubalina +1Hybrid AttentionRecurrent Transformers

    AIRI, Moscow, Russia · YSDA, Moscow, Russia · HSE University, Moscow, Russia

  10. Beyond the Harness: End-to-End Optimization of Context Artifacts for Enterprise Text-to-SQL

    Aug 24, 2026Kate Gwimm, Carson EisenachText-to-SQLLLM Context Management

    Amazon

  11. LENS: In-Context Search via Latent Evidence Exploration over Dynamic Raw Documents

    Aug 17, 2026Xingjun Wang, Gongsheng Li, Qi Fan +3In-Context RetrievalEvidence Retrieval

    ModelScope Team, Alibaba Group Hangzhou, China

  12. MARCH: Scaling Recurrent Memory with Content-Routed State Anchors

    Aug 12, 2026Ming Zhang, Kaisen Yang, Shu Yu +6Long-Context RetrievalIn-Context Retrieval

    Shanghai AI Laboratory · Tsinghua University · Fudan University

  13. Gradient-free Task-Conditioned Retrieval for On-Device In-Context Learning

    Jul 30, 2026Xinyu Luo, Hui Liu, Yihua Shao +3In-Context Example SelectionIn-Context Retrieval

    City University of Hong Kong, China · Institute of Automation Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

  14. Keep It InMind: Benchmarking the Implicit-Association Blind Spot in Agent Memory

    Jul 27, 2026Ruizhe Li, Mingxuan Du, Benfeng Xu +1Agent MemoryIn-Context Retrieval

    University of Science and Technology of China · Metastone Technology

  15. Anti-Periodic Positional Encoding: Möbius Boundary Conditions Make In-Context Retrieval Reliable

    Jul 23, 2026Ji Ho BaeRotary Positional EmbeddingsIn-Context Retrieval

    JRTI, Seoul, 05855, Republic of Korea

  16. Can Language Models Actually Retrieve In-Context? Drowning in Documents at Million Token Scale

    Jul 1, 2026Siddharth Gollapudi, Nilesh Gupta, Prasann Singhal +1In-Context RetrievalLength Generalization

    UC Berkeley · UT Austin

  17. MATCH: Modulating Attention via In-Context Retrieval for Long-Context Transformers

    Jun 29, 2026Linrui Ma, Chun Hei Lo, Xinyu Wang +12In-Context RetrievalLong-Context Language Modeling

    Huawei Canada · McGill University · Université de Montréal +1

  18. Can LLMs Judge Better Than They Generate? Evaluating Task Asymmetry, Mechanistic Interpretability and Transferability for In-Context QA

    Jun 26, 2026Sambaran BandyopadhyayIn-Context RetrievalLLM Evaluation

    Adobe Research

  19. IPO Finance Agent: Benchmark of LLM Financial Analysts Beyond Finance Agent v2, with Automated Rubric Generation, on the SpaceX (SPCX) IPO

    Jun 22, 2026Mostapha BenhendaFinanceLLM-as-a-Judge

  20. Don't Read Everything: A Curvature-Conditioned Query for Linear Attention

    May 31, 2026Dong Le, Thong Nguyen, Cong-Duy Nguyen +1In-Context RetrievalLong-Context Language Modeling

    Nanyang Technological University · National University of Singapore · VinUniversity

  21. ICICLE: Expanding Retrieval with In-Context Documents

    May 26, 2026Yu-Chen Den, Yung-Yu Shih, Zhi Rui Tam +4In-Context RetrievalGenerative Retrieval

    1National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan · 2Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, US

  22. Membership Inference Attacks for Retrieval Based In-Context Learning for Document Question Answering

    May 5, 2026Tejas Kulkarni, Antti Koskela, Laith ZumotIn-Context RetrievalMembership Inference Attacks

    Nokia Bell Labs · Nokia

  23. Retrieval and Multi-Hop Reasoning in 1M-Token Context Windows: Evaluating LLMs on Classical Chinese Text

    May 4, 2026Eric H. C. ChowLong-Context RetrievalIn-Context Retrieval

    School of Humanities, The University of Hong Kong

  24. RecaLLM: Addressing the Lost-in-Thought Phenomenon with Explicit In-Context Retrieval

    Apr 10, 2026Kyle Whitecross, Negin RahimiRetrieval-Augmented ReasoningLong-Context Reasoning in Language Models

    University of Massachusetts Amherst

  25. Facts as First Class Objects: Knowledge Objects for Persistent LLM Memory

    Mar 18, 2026Oliver Zahn, Simran ChanaPersistent Memory for Language ModelsLLM Memory

    Independent Researcher · University of Cambridge

  26. Upgrade the Retriever First: What an LLM Call per Chunk Buys in RAG

    Mar 8, 2026Bhavik ManglaDocument ChunkingRetrieval-Augmented Generation

    Independent Research

  27. Retrievit: In-context Retrieval Capabilities of Transformers, State Space Models, and Hybrid Architectures

    Mar 3, 2026Georgios Pantazopoulos, Malvina Nikandrou, Ioannis Konstas +1In-Context RetrievalTransformer

    University of Edinburgh · Heriot-Watt University

  28. SR-TTT Does Not Learn Retrieval: A Correction and Mechanistic Post-Mortem of Surprisal-Aware Residual Test-Time Training

    Feb 26, 2026Swamynathan V PMemory-Augmented Language ModelsTest-Time Training

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering Amrita School of Computing Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

  29. Beyond Semantic Similarity: Reducing Unnecessary API Calls via Behavior-Aligned Retriever

    Aug 20, 2025Yixin Chen, Ying Xiong, Shangyu Wu +4In-Context Example SelectionIn-Context Retrieval

    City University of Hong Kong · Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence · McGill University