AquiLLM: a RAG Tool for Capturing Tacit Knowledge in Research Groups
It addresses the challenge for research groups in managing internal, private knowledge, but it is incremental as it adapts existing RAG methods to a specific domain.
The paper tackled the problem of capturing and accessing tacit knowledge in research groups, which is often informal and fragmented, by introducing AquiLLM, a lightweight RAG system that supports varied document types and configurable privacy settings to improve knowledge retrieval.
Research groups face persistent challenges in capturing, storing, and retrieving knowledge that is distributed across team members. Although structured data intended for analysis and publication is often well managed, much of a group's collective knowledge remains informal, fragmented, or undocumented--often passed down orally through meetings, mentoring, and day-to-day collaboration. This includes private resources such as emails, meeting notes, training materials, and ad hoc documentation. Together, these reflect the group's tacit knowledge--the informal, experience-based expertise that underlies much of their work. Accessing this knowledge can be difficult, requiring significant time and insider understanding. Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems offer promising solutions by enabling users to query and generate responses grounded in relevant source material. However, most current RAG-LLM systems are oriented toward public documents and overlook the privacy concerns of internal research materials. We introduce AquiLLM (pronounced ah-quill-em), a lightweight, modular RAG system designed to meet the needs of research groups. AquiLLM supports varied document types and configurable privacy settings, enabling more effective access to both formal and informal knowledge within scholarly groups.