Definition
Retrieval-augmented generation that builds and queries graph structure, often alongside source text and vector retrieval. Microsoft GraphRAG extracts entities, relationships, claims, communities, and summaries, then uses those derived structures during retrieval.
Distinguish it from nearby terms
GraphRAG is a form of RAG, not its replacement. It is useful when a question depends on relationships or corpus-level themes that similarity search may miss, but it adds indexing cost and model-extraction error.
Check your understanding
Evaluate GraphRAG against a simpler retrieval baseline on the actual question class, and preserve links from every generated structure back to source text.