AI / LlamaIndex Interview Questions
What is a node parser or text splitter in LlamaIndex?
A node parser, also called a text splitter, is the component that breaks a Document's text into smaller Node chunks before embedding and indexing.
The default is SentenceSplitter, which tries to split on sentence boundaries while respecting a target chunk size and overlap so that context isn't harshly cut mid-sentence. Other options include TokenTextSplitter for splitting strictly by token count, SentenceWindowNodeParser for retrieving single sentences while keeping surrounding context in metadata, and SemanticSplitterNodeParser, which uses embedding similarity to find natural topic boundaries instead of a fixed size.
Choosing the right splitter affects retrieval quality directly: chunks that are too large dilute relevance, while chunks that are too small lose context.
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