vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector

vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from AnthonyAlcaraz/agentic-graph-rag-skills. It costs 215 tokens per session (2,395 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for choosing vector search, graph search, or a combination for retrieving information. Vector search finds text with similar meaning, while graph search follows connections between people, events, facts, and other entities.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to classify a query workload and choose a retrieval approach for factual lookups, multi-step questions, large datasets, and strategic analysis.
Why use it?
It helps avoid using vector search for questions that require many connected facts, broad analysis, time-based reasoning, or tracing relationships across data.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to classify a query workload and choose a retrieval approach for factual lookups, multi-step questions, large datasets, and strategic analysis.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/anthonyalcaraz/agentic-graph-rag-skills/vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add AnthonyAlcaraz/agentic-graph-rag-skills --skill vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AnthonyAlcaraz/agentic-graph-rag-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/anthonyalcaraz/agentic-graph-rag-skills/vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/anthonyalcaraz/agentic-graph-rag-skills/vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/anthonyalcaraz/agentic-graph-rag-skills/vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/anthonyalcaraz/agentic-graph-rag-skills/vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/anthonyalcaraz/agentic-graph-rag-skills/vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/anthonyalcaraz/agentic-graph-rag-skills/vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 215 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,395 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00215 $0.02395
Opus 5 $0.00108 $0.01197
Sonnet 5 $0.00043 $0.00479
Haiku 4.5 $0.00021 $0.00239

Measured 11d ago against content hash a12219ca6a79, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 2 executable files (cli.py, lib.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/crisis/vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector/SKILL.md · 161 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 161 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Vector-vs-Graph Retrieval Selector

Overview

Ch1 makes the vector-vs-graph choice evidence-based rather than ideological. Microsoft's BenchmarkQED classifies queries on two axes:

  • Scopelocal (specific facts in a small number of regions) vs global / sensemaking (reasoning over large portions of the dataset).
  • Typedata (direct fact retrieval) vs activity (interpretive / strategic).

The chapter's numeric anchors:

  • Vector RAG: ~90% accuracy on simple lookups (DataLocal); 20-30% on complex reasoning (ActivityGlobal). "The very mechanism that makes vector search efficient becomes its fundamental limitation."
  • LazyGraphRAG outperforms vector RAG by 50-60% on multi-hop reasoning.
  • EyeLevel.ai: at 100,000 pages, vector accuracy drops up to 12% while graph drops only ~2%.
  • The larger-context-window rebuttal: BenchmarkQED tested vector RAG against LazyGraphRAG with a ~1-million-token window (essentially the whole dataset); vector RAG still lost on every query type except the most basic factual questions, and bigger windows worsen "lost in the middle."

Where vector RAG shines (Ch1): local, fact-based lookups — customer support, FAQ, recommendation. Where it collapses: multi-hop reasoning, temporal awareness, the associativity gap ("which services were affected by the database migration that followed the security patch we discussed last month").

Ch1's own recommendation for agents is a HYBRID architecture — parallel vector + graph (vector search -> graph traversal -> context synthesis) — because agentic behavior "requires constantly moving between local and global understanding." GraphRAG is not free: the chapter names upfront graph-construction cost, query latency that grows with graph size, contextual nuance lost in triples, and schema-evolution cost. The selector surfaces those costs whenever it recommends GRAPH or HYBRID.

When to Use

  • Choosing a retrieval architecture for a new enterprise agent
  • Answering "should we add a graph, or is vector RAG enough?"
  • Rebutting "let's just use a bigger context window instead of a graph"
  • Mapping a mixed query workload to the right per-query strategy
  • Teaching the BenchmarkQED local/global x data/activity quadrants

Read the full file on GitHub · 161 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 161 lines · 215 tokens per session scan A a12219ca6a79

Subscribe to this mod's changes

vector-vs-graph-retrieval-selector is a skill published in the GitHub repository AnthonyAlcaraz/agentic-graph-rag-skills (10 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 215 tokens to every session and 2,395 once invoked, about $0.0011 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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