Diagram

RAG is one pass. Agentic RAG is a loop.

Plain RAG: question, one search, answer. Agentic RAG: question, plan, search, judge the results; if they are not enough, rewrite the query and search again; if they are, answer with sources or say nothing was found. RAG Question Search once Answer Agentic RAG Question Plan Search Judge Answer or "not found" Rewrite query if the results are not enough
Both depend on the same search step. The loop adds model calls to plan, judge and rewrite. Pattern names follow the survey by Singh et al., arXiv 2501.09136.