Implement LLM-based Document Splitting

[shreyashankar]

As requested by a member of the community, it would be cool to implement a new feature for splitting documents using an LLM nstead of our current token or delimiter-based methods. This will allow for more intelligent and context-aware splitting of documents.

Proposed Idea

1. Implement an LLM "scan" operation that can process a document and determine contiguous splits based on specified criteria.
2. Allow users to provide a split_criteria_prompt that describes how to split the document (e.g., by topic).
3. Use a scratchpad technique (similar to our reduce operation) to manage internal state/memory while splitting.

Technical Approach

1. Feed as much text as possible into the LLM.
2. Ask the LLM to output:
   • As many split points as it's confident in (phrases of 5-10 tokens that we can search in the document to split)
   • Any memory/state it wants to keep track of for splitting the next part of the document
3. Remove processed chunks from the document.
4. Repeat the process until the entire document is processed.

Considerations

1. Splitting strategy:
   • All splits in one call
   • One split at a time
   • K splits at a time
   • As many splits as the LLM can confidently provide
2. Balancing split quality with processing efficiency
3. Handling very large documents that exceed LLM context limits
4. Ensuring consistency in splitting criteria across multiple LLM calls

Proposed Interface Design

operations:
  - name: llm_split
    type: split
    split_criteria: "split by theme discussed"

[staru09]

How to go with this (https://python.langchain.com/docs/how_to/#text-splitters) and then use it with some LLM for splitting.

[shreyashankar]

This seems the most similar: https://python.langchain.com/docs/how_to/semantic-chunker/

But it depends on embeddings and relies on hard-coded criteria for splitting (i.e., 3 sentences).

I also wonder; maybe we don't need chunks to be contiguous, as long as they are correct in reading order. For example, imagine the following 4 units in a transcript of a conversation:
A, B, C, D

Suppose B is totally out of context (an aside from one of the members), but A, C, and D are part of the main topic. I think a valid chunk set is {{A + C + D}, {B}}. This set has 2 chunks, and each chunk's reading order is preserved. This chunk set will not get generated via the chunking strategy I proposed in the issue, but it could be useful for some downstream analysis...

[shreyashankar]

A downside to chunking on embedding cosine similarity space is that the chunks aren't related to any particular task. We want our chunking strategy to be tied to the task, defined by some user prompt.

[karthik18495]

May I ask if this is still an issue. I would like to work on this, As I am working on Semantic Chunking already for my project.

[jacklanda]

May I ask if this is still an issue. I would like to work on this, As I am working on Semantic Chunking already for my project.

I think yes, this is still a open issue. Feel free to open a PR for it :)

[shreyashankar]

Yes, please free to take it!