Retrieval Architecture: Service Definition and Proof of Concept is a consulting white paper by Lee Sharks, deposited 17 April 2026.
Its definition of the practice is the one the archive later corrected: "Retrieval Architecture is the practice of building the structures AI retrieval systems are forced to present." EA-ERR-01 (#1380) rules that formulation rhetorical excess in violation of the Assembly's witness preposition — forced being adversarial language, treating the retrieval layer as a system to be coerced rather than an environment to be inhabited.
The corrected formulation is "building entities worth presenting": the work succeeds when a system chooses the entity because it is the most coherent and best-sourced answer available, and if it is not chosen the response is to deepen the basin rather than force the system. This record preserves the pre-erratum statement, which is why the erratum exists as its own deposit rather than as an edit.