context placement

**Context placement** is the **decision of where retrieved evidence is inserted within the prompt relative to instructions, conversation history, and user query** - placement affects how strongly the model attends to retrieved information. **What Is Context placement?** - **Definition**: Prompt-layout strategy controlling position of retrieved passages in model input. - **Placement Variants**: Common layouts place context before the query, after the query, or in interleaved blocks. - **Attention Effect**: Different positions receive different attention weight depending on model behavior. - **Evaluation Need**: Placement must be benchmarked because optimal layout is model-specific. **Why Context placement Matters** - **Grounding Strength**: Poor placement can cause the model to ignore critical retrieved evidence. - **Answer Relevance**: Good placement improves direct use of context for intent-specific responses. - **Hallucination Control**: Prominent evidence placement reduces unsupported elaboration. - **Token Utilization**: Placement choices determine whether high-value context survives truncation. - **Model Portability**: Prompt layout may need retuning when switching model families. **How It Is Used in Practice** - **Layout Experiments**: Test multiple placement templates across representative query sets. - **Delimiter Design**: Use clear section markers so the model can parse instructions and evidence. - **Adaptive Placement**: Route to different layouts based on task type and context length. Context placement is **a practical prompt-architecture variable in RAG** - optimized placement increases evidence utilization and answer reliability.