Practical overview
When it fits
Use it when preparing documents for RAG and the same splitting approach may not suit every document, or when evaluating how candidate chunk boundaries affect document structure and context.
Who it is for
- Developers preparing documents for a RAG ingestion pipeline.
- Information-retrieval practitioners comparing chunking strategies across documents.
- Teams extending chunking methods or quality metrics for their own document domains.
Documented uses
- Select a splitting strategy for each document rather than using one method for an entire corpus.
- Parse PDFs and create chunk records for downstream retrieval workflows.
- Measure chunk outputs for size, semantic cohesion, contextual coherence, structural integrity and broken references.
- Compare alternative chunking approaches using shared intrinsic metrics.
Requirements & limits
The public GitHub repository identifies the project as MIT-licensed. Python 3.11 or later is specified.
- The core installation contains splitters and metrics; PDF and Excel parsing requires the parsing extra.
- Docling is the default PDF parsing backend; PyMuPDF and Azure Document Intelligence are also listed.
- Some metrics require the spaCy
en_core_web_smmodel. - The optional coreference-resolution extra is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 with a non-commercial condition.
- The library prepares and evaluates chunks; downstream retrieval and generation remain separate workflow stages.
Check current requirements in the official documentation. Source-based guidance does not mean OpenViST has run or independently tested this project.
Parse and chunk PDF documents
Use the library’s PDF parsing interface to turn a PDF file or directory of PDFs into chunk records.
Before you start
- Python 3.11 or later.
- The repository cloned locally.
- Install the parsing dependencies with
pip install -e ".[parsing]". - A PDF file or directory of PDFs.
Steps
Clone the repository and change into its directory.
Install the parsing extra with the command below.
pip install -e ".[parsing]"Import
chunk_filesfromadaptive_chunkingand pass it a PDF file or directory, optionally settingchunk_size=600andchunk_overlap=50.Inspect the returned records, which include document name, chunk index, text, page information, title context and chunk length.
Expected outcome
A list of chunk records produced from the input PDF file or directory.
Guide limitations
- The parsing extra is required for the documented PDF parsing workflow.
- The README does not specify a parser-independent output guarantee or downstream retrieval setup.
Compare options for Retrieval-augmented applications
These projects document a common task and share a project role. This is a source-based comparison, not an execution benchmark or a guarantee of interchangeability.
| Project | Documented purpose | Platform | Access and requirements |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adaptive Chunking | Select a splitting strategy for each document rather than using one method for an entire corpus. | Linux, macOS, Windows | The public GitHub repository identifies the project as MIT-licensed. Python 3.11 or later is specified. |
| Langsearch | Crawl website or local data for a knowledge base. | CLI, Self-hosted, Server | |
| Hybrid Search Rag | Combine document retrieval and language-model generation in a configurable workflow. |
Sources & review
Source record details
- Source availability
- Active
- Sources checked
- 14 October 2026
- Original website title
- ekimetrics/adaptive-chunking · Official homepage title · retained in its source language

