Researchers propose a new approach called ingest-time semantic compilation (ISC), where a corpus's meaning is compiled into a queryable substrate at write time. This reduces the need for expensive language models to re-derive meaning on each query, similar to how databases handle full-table scans. Two existence proofs demonstrate ISC's effectiveness: it scales with change rather than corpus size and outperforms traditional retrieval-augmented question-answering systems in a held-out sample of transcripts. --- Why it matters: This matters to AI engineers because ISC has the potential to significantly reduce inference spend, which is becoming increasingly expensive as context volume grows. By compiling meaning at write time, ISC could enable more efficient and cost-effective question-answering systems. Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.20845