michaelfeil / michaelfeil/infinity

Support for colbert style late interaction models in rerank endpoint

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Dominant language
Python
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Description

### Feature request

There have been discussions on having decent performance in using colbert style models as rerankers (e.g. https://www.answer.ai/posts/2024-09-16-rerankers.html), and it would be useful if the rerank endpoint can support these as well.

### Motivation

It would give more options in which models can be used for reranking, and the colbert style models are likely to have lower latencies than comparably sized models than cross encoders. Since Infinity already support colbert embeddings, it might not be too much work to add support.

### Your contribution

I am willing to attempt an implementation

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the rerank endpoint and the existing ColBERT embedding support. Determine how ColBERT-style late interaction models should be exposed through reranking, then add coverage showing the endpoint accepts and produces results for them.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
api, machine-learning
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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