TOC-Guided Retrieval

I want to evaluate and, if it fits, integrate a technique from recent AI research into my project.

## Technique: TOC-Guided Retrieval
New retrieval model uses table of contents to hit 82.6% recall with near-zero hallucination

Novel RAG retrieval technique: use document table of contents as a routing index before dense retrieval (AlphaSignal signal · 2026-09-08 · news@alphasignal.ai). 160 likes. 82.6% recall with near-zero hallucination. Score 8: directly implementable RAG improvement — TOC-guided retrieval is a practical technique for any long-document RAG pipeline.

What the reference demo shows: Gradio demo with 5 sub-tabs — (1) Architecture Overview: TOC routing vs standard dense retrieval diagram; (2) TOC Router Demo: live query routing against a sample document TOC; (3) Standard vs TOC-Guided: side-by-side retrieval comparison with hallucination detection; (4) Benchmark Results: 82.6% recall / 3.1% hallucination across 2,400 queries; (5) Implementation Patterns: 5 production patterns (auto-extract, LLM-generated, hierarchical, hybrid, dynamic refresh).

## Reference implementation (Vector Ridge Labs, POC-034)
- Live demo: https://osoman2-gradio-pocs.hf.space/?poc=POC-034
- Source code: https://huggingface.co/spaces/osoman2/Gradio_pocs/tree/main/toc_retrieval
Original source: AlphaSignal signal · 2026-09-08

## My project
<Describe your stack, the problem you want to solve and where this technique would sit. Example: "Python FastAPI RAG service over 50k PDFs, Postgres + pgvector, OpenAI embeddings, p95 latency budget 800 ms.">

## What I need from you
1. Read the reference source code and explain in at most 5 bullets how the technique works and what it would change compared to my current approach.
2. Decide whether it fits my case. If it does not, say why and stop there.
3. Propose the smallest viable integration: files or modules to touch, new dependencies, configuration.
4. Implement it behind a flag or as a separate function so it can be compared side by side with what I have today.
5. Add an evaluation script that measures retrieval quality (recall@k / nDCG on a labelled sample of my queries) and latency, before and after, on my own data.
6. List the risks (latency, cost, failure modes) and what to monitor once it is in production.

Constraints: keep my existing stack and conventions, avoid heavy dependencies unless the gain is clear, and reference the file in the demo source whenever you reuse its logic.