Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. In some wireless communications systems, a base station may precode downlink signals to be transmitted to a user equipment (UE) using a precoding matrix. The precoding matrix may be selected by a UE from a number of precoding matrices (e.g., a codebook) and reported to the base station in a channel state information (CSI) report. As described herein, a base station may support techniques for limiting a number of precoding matrices that a UE may evaluate to identify a preferred precoding matrix to be indicated to the base station. In addition, the techniques described herein allow a base station to dynamically indicate an appropriate set of precoding matrices for the UE to evaluate based on the channel conditions at a given time.