Which Documents Should You Feed It?

Files are RAG's food. Feed it stale, secret, or irrelevant content and you'll get a stomachache. Keep your first plate clean.

Let's think about it this way for a second

A good document is short, titled, dated, and something you actually own. A bad one is a giant screenshot, a chat log with passwords in it, someone else's writing, or a zip file with five tangled-up versions inside. RAG trusts whatever's in the file — feed it garbage, and it'll confidently serve garbage right back to you. It's the same reason you wouldn't toss a rotting piece of fruit from the back of the fridge into your cooking.

Let's connect it to everyday life

Good starter files for a study RAG: class-rules.md, week-1-notes.md, faq.md. For each one, write down a title, date, and owner. Don't include a full WhatsApp export, 20 duplicate copies, or a .env file with API keys in it. Give files human-readable names — phones-in-class.md is much easier to search than doc1.docx.

Start with 3–5 files
Record the name, date, and owner
Don't include secrets or other people's writing

Let's try it hands-on together

markdown

# week-1-notes.md
Date: 2026-06-02
Owner: me
Topic: Photosynthesis

အပင်များသည် နေရောင်ကိုသုံး၍ အစာလုပ်သည်။
ရေနှင့် ကာဗွန်ဒိုင်အောက်ဆိုဒ် လိုအပ်သည်။

You should see

You'll be able to write a short file that's actually worth putting into RAG.

5-Minute Try-It

For 3 sample files, write the name, date, and why you'd include them. Also list 2 files that shouldn't be included.

One Quick Warning

If a file has student grades, phone numbers, or passwords in it, it belongs in the shredder — not in RAG.