What are instruction-tuned embeddings, and why do query and passage prefixes matter?
Modern embedding models expect a task instruction prepended to the text, and a wrong prefix quietly wrecks retrieval. The signal is why instructions help and the asymmetric query/passage convention.
Updated Sep 2026 · Grounded in real GenAI, LLM, and AI/ML engineering interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.
Modern embedding models expect a task instruction prepended to the text, and a wrong prefix quietly wrecks retrieval. The signal is why instructions help and the asymmetric query/passage convention.
Lead with where the obvious approach breaks, because that is the judgment they are screening for — most candidates jump straight to the happy path and lose the room.
Then walk the failure back through the pipeline in order, naming the one metric the customer's exec sponsor actually cares about before you propose the fix.
