File-Type Routing for RAG Chunking: PDFs to Page-Level, Web Pages to Recursive Split, Code to Language-Aware Separators

Firecrawl·medium signal

Production RAG pipelines achieve optimal per-type recall by routing each document format to a different chunking strategy: PDFs use page-level chunking to preserve layout and avoid cross-page bleed, web pages use recursive character splitting at 400-512 tokens, and code files use language-aware separators that respect function and class boundaries. Firecrawl's 2026 RAG benchmark identifies this content-type routing pattern as a baseline production requirement — one-size-fits-all chunking consistently degrades recall across mixed document corpora.