Diagram of a hybrid retriever with sparse and dense branches feeding a reranker.

Build a Hybrid Sparse-Dense Retriever: A CV-Worthy RAG Side Project

Hands-on build guide for a hybrid sparse-dense retriever (BM25 + embedding reranking) with a from-scratch HNSW vector index. Real runnable code, architecture diagrams, and a roadmap to senior-level.

September 7, 2026 · 14 min · 2978 words · martinuke0
Feedback