Retrieval-augmented reasoning with lean language models
Authors: name: Ryan Sze-Yin Chan; name: Federico Nanni; name: Tomas Lazauskas; name: Rosie Wood; name: Penelope Yong; name: Lionel Tarassenko; name: Mark Girolami; name: James Geddes; name: Andrew Duncan
Published: 2025-08-15 10:38:15

Abstract: This technical report details a novel approach to combining reasoning and
retrieval augmented generation (RAG) within a single, lean language model
architecture. While existing RAG systems typically rely on large-scale models
and external APIs, our work addresses the increasing demand for performant and
privacy-preserving solutions deployable in resource-constrained or secure
environments. Building on recent developments in test-time scaling and
small-scale reasoning models, we develop a retrieval augmented conversational
agent capable of interpreting complex, domain-specific queries using a
lightweight backbone model. Our system integrates a dense retriever with
fine-tuned Qwen2.5-Instruct models, using synthetic query generation and
reasoning traces derived from frontier models (e.g., DeepSeek-R1) over a
curated corpus, in this case, the NHS A-to-Z condition pages. We explore the
impact of summarisation-based document compression, synthetic data design, and
reasoning-aware fine-tuning on model performance. Evaluation against both
non-reasoning and general-purpose lean models demonstrates that our
domain-specific fine-tuning approach yields substantial gains in answer
accuracy and consistency, approaching frontier-level performance while
remaining feasible for local deployment. All implementation details and code
are publicly released to support reproducibility and adaptation across domains.