When to RAG, When to Go Agentic: UX Patterns for AI Response Modes
or let users select if they want RAG
The ‘is RAG dead?’ debate misses the point. The real question isn’t whether RAG has limitations. It obviously does. The question is whether we should keep optimizing around those limitations or expose different approaches to users.RAG’’s problems are well-known: vector similarity is a black box, chunking strategies are rigid, and retrieved context often misses what matters.
Agentic approaches like adaptive RAG, multi-step reasoning, and tool use fix many of these issues by being more transparent and adaptive. But they add extra latency and compute costs. For most queries, that’s overkill.
Latency is the cornerstone of great products. Jonathan Ross, founder of Groq, says: “Every 100 millisecond of speedup increases conversion rate by 8%.” Google won the search wars not just with better algorithms, but by being 10x faster. Today’s AI search faces the same tension: speed vs depth. But unlike the 2000s, we now have UX patterns that let users choose.
We don’t need to settle between approaches, let users decide.
RAG is quick and works for most use cases. Agentic search is for complex queries that need depth. The key is communicating this to users in a friendly way, without explaining your architecture.
Cursor does this well with three modes:
Ask: Quick responses querying your codebase (seconds)
Agentic: Multi-step reasoning with reflection and evaluation (minutes)
Background: Long-running tasks (Minutes to hours)
But we can go further. Progressive disclosure: start with RAG, stream an answer, have an LLM evaluate the response, then suggest deeper analysis if needed. Let users escalate on demand.
Cursor’s audience is technical and intuitively understands these tradeoffs. The harder challenge is communicating this to non-technical users in legaltech, finance, healthcare. How do you explain “quick vs deep” without saying “RAG vs agentic”?
That’s the product design problem. Beyond building good RAG or good agentic search, how do you design the UI to set proper expectations? Auto-mode helps, but clear communication about speed/depth tradeoffs is crucial.
The debate isn’t “RAG vs agentic.” It’s “how do we expose both modes in a way users understand?”
Hit the like and subscribe button if you enjoyed what I wrote.