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22 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
22 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
# Key Concepts
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## Chains
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A chain is made up of links, which can be either primitives or other chains.
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They vary greatly in complexity and are combination of generic, highly configurable pipelines and more narrow (but usually more complex) pipelines.
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## Sequential Chain
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This is a specific type of chain where multiple other chains are run in sequence, with the outputs being added as inputs
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to the next. A subtype of this type of chain is the `SimpleSequentialChain`, where all subchains have only one input and one output,
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and the output of one is therefore used as sole input to the next chain.
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## CombineDocuments Chains
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These are a subset of chains designed to work with documents. There are two pieces to consider:
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1. The underlying chain method (eg, how the documents are combined)
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2. Use cases for these types of chains.
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For the first, please see [this documentation](combine_docs.md) for more detailed information on the types of chains LangChain supports.
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For the second, please see the Use Cases section for more information on [question answering](/use_cases/question_answering.md),
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[question answering with sources](/use_cases/qa_with_sources.md), and [summarization](/use_cases/summarization.md).
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