Node Postprocessors

Installation

npm install llamaindex @llamaindex/cohere @llamaindex/openai

Concept

Node postprocessors are a set of modules that take a set of nodes, and apply some kind of transformation or filtering before returning them.

In LlamaIndex, node postprocessors are most commonly applied within a query engine, after the node retrieval step and before the response synthesis step.

LlamaIndex offers several node postprocessors for immediate use, while also providing a simple API for adding your own custom postprocessors.

Usage Pattern

An example of using a node postprocessors is below:

import { CohereRerank } from "@llamaindex/cohere";
import { Node, NodeWithScore, SimilarityPostprocessor, TextNode } from "llamaindex";
 
const nodes: NodeWithScore[] = [
  {
    node: new TextNode({ text: "hello world" }),
    score: 0.8,
  },
  {
    node: new TextNode({ text: "LlamaIndex is the best" }),
    score: 0.6,
  },
];
 
// similarity postprocessor: filter nodes below 0.75 similarity score
const processor = new SimilarityPostprocessor({
  similarityCutoff: 0.7,
});
 
const filteredNodes = await processor.postprocessNodes(nodes);
 
// cohere rerank: rerank nodes given query using trained model
const reranker = new CohereRerank({
  apiKey: "<COHERE_API_KEY>",
  topN: 2,
});
 
const rerankedNodes = await reranker.postprocessNodes(nodes, "<user_query>");
 
console.log(filteredNodes, rerankedNodes);

Now you can use the filteredNodes and rerankedNodes in your application.

Using Node Postprocessors in LlamaIndex

Most commonly, node-postprocessors will be used in a query engine, where they are applied to the nodes returned from a retriever, and before the response synthesis step.

Using Node Postprocessors in a Query Engine

import { CohereRerank } from "@llamaindex/cohere";
import { OpenAI } from "@llamaindex/openai";
import { Node, NodeWithScore, SimilarityPostprocessor, Settings, TextNode } from "llamaindex";
 
// Use OpenAI LLM
Settings.llm = new OpenAI({ model: "gpt-3.5-turbo", temperature: 0.1 });
 
const nodes: NodeWithScore[] = [
  {
    node: new TextNode({ text: "hello world" }),
    score: 0.8,
  },
  {
    node: new TextNode({ text: "LlamaIndex is the best" }),
    score: 0.6,
  }
];
 
// cohere rerank: rerank nodes given query using trained model
const reranker = new CohereRerank({
  apiKey: "<COHERE_API_KEY>",
  topN: 2,
});
 
const document = new Document({ text: "essay", id_: "essay" });
 
const queryEngine = index.asQueryEngine({
  nodePostprocessors: [processor, reranker],
});
 
// all node post-processors will be applied during each query
const response = await queryEngine.query("<user_query>");

Using with retrieved nodes

import { SimilarityPostprocessor } from "llamaindex";
 
nodes = await index.asRetriever().retrieve({ query: "test query str" });
 
const processor = new SimilarityPostprocessor({
  similarityCutoff: 0.7,
});
 
const filteredNodes = processor.postprocessNodes(nodes);