Reranking: Improving Search Quality

Implement two-stage retrieval with Cohere reranking to improve search result relevance.

Cohere scores and reorders the candidates returned by Qdrant. Evaluate relevance on your queries to determine whether reranking improves results. If the rerank call fails, this adapter logs the error and returns the original candidates.

reranking.py
"""
Reranking: Improving Search Quality
=====================================
Reranking is a two-stage retrieval process:
1. First, retrieve candidate results using vector/hybrid search
2. Then, a reranker model scores and reorders results by relevance

This dramatically improves result quality, especially for complex queries.

Supported rerankers:
- CohereReranker: Cohere's rerank models (recommended)
- SentenceTransformerReranker: Local reranking with BAAI/bge models
- InfinityReranker: Self-hosted reranking
- BedrockReranker: AWS Bedrock reranking

See also: 02_hybrid_search.py for search type options.
"""

import asyncio

from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.knowledge.embedder.openai import OpenAIEmbedder
from agno.knowledge.knowledge import Knowledge
from agno.knowledge.reranker.cohere import CohereReranker
from agno.models.openai import OpenAIResponses
from agno.vectordb.qdrant import Qdrant
from agno.vectordb.search import SearchType

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Setup
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

qdrant_url = "http://localhost:6333"

# Knowledge with hybrid search + Cohere reranking
knowledge = Knowledge(
    vector_db=Qdrant(
        collection="reranking_demo",
        url=qdrant_url,
        search_type=SearchType.hybrid,
        embedder=OpenAIEmbedder(id="text-embedding-3-small"),
        reranker=CohereReranker(model="rerank-multilingual-v3.0"),
    ),
)

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Create Agent
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

agent = Agent(
    model=OpenAIResponses(id="gpt-5.2"),
    knowledge=knowledge,
    search_knowledge=True,
    instructions=[
        "Always search your knowledge base before answering.",
        "Include sources in your response.",
    ],
    markdown=True,
)

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Run Demo
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

if __name__ == "__main__":

    async def main():
        await knowledge.ainsert(
            url="https://agno-public.s3.amazonaws.com/recipes/ThaiRecipes.pdf"
        )

        print("\n" + "=" * 60)
        print("Hybrid search + Cohere reranking")
        print("=" * 60 + "\n")

        agent.print_response(
            "What are some good Thai dessert recipes?",
            stream=True,
        )

    asyncio.run(main())

Run the Example

Set up your virtual environment

uv venv --python 3.12
source .venv/bin/activate

Install dependencies

uv pip install -U agno beautifulsoup4 cohere fastembed openai pypdf qdrant-client

Export your API keys

export CO_API_KEY="your_co_api_key_here"
export OPENAI_API_KEY="your_openai_api_key_here"

Run Qdrant

docker run -d --name qdrant -p 6333:6333 qdrant/qdrant:latest

Run the example

Save the code above as reranking.py, then run:

python reranking.py

Full source: cookbook/07_knowledge/02_building_blocks/03_reranking.py