Corpus is an indexed store that holds your documents, called resources, along with their associated metadata. Unlike a RAG Assistant, which bundles ingestion, retrieval, and generation into a single component, a Corpus separates ingestion and retrieval into their own indexed store, so an Agent can decide when to query it and use the results to generate a response.
Each Corpus applies a default indexing scheme so your documents can later be retrieved through semantic similarity. This scheme includes:
- Embeddings
- Chunking
- Ingestion
- Vector store parameters
An Agent accesses a Corpus through the Semantic Similarity tools. At runtime, the Agent decides whether to query the Corpus based on the user's question and its own prompt, it is not forced to consult the Corpus on every turn. This gives the Agent flexibility for query understanding, dynamic retrieval, and iterative generation, though it also means the Agent may occasionally skip the Corpus even when relevant documents exist.
Keep the following in mind when configuring a Corpus:
- Prompt tuning: A poorly worded prompt or an unclear question is the single most common reason a Corpus "isn't being used." If the Agent answers without citing your documents, it may have chosen not to call the Tool. To fix this:
- Strengthen the prompt, for example by instructing the Agent to search the Corpus for domain questions.
- Confirm the Tool and Corpus are correctly bound.
- Check Agent with a corpus - configuration samples for guidelines on how to configure your Agent.
- Max Runs: Adjust the number of reasoning and Tool iterations the Agent may take (default: 5).
- Retrieval tuning: Tune retrieval per Agent through the Semantic Similarity tool's score threshold, top-K, filters, and reranker.
- Project-level visibility: Everyone in the Project sees all corpora and Agents in that Project; there is no per-user isolation within a Project.
To define or update a Corpus, you can use the Corpus API or work directly in Agentic Hub. If you choose Agentic Hub, follow the steps described in How to create a Corpus.
Since version 2026-06.