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May 19, 2026, 12:00 AM·4 min·architecture-note

Manual RAG over general-purpose frameworks

A short architecture note on why this platform uses a small direct RAG implementation instead of reaching for a heavier orchestration layer.

ArchitectureRAGFastAPI

Decision

Use a direct retrieval pipeline built from FastAPI, pgvector, explicit prompts, and small provider abstractions.

Why

  • the system behavior stays easy to inspect
  • retrieval bugs are easier to diagnose
  • the code path from query to embedding to retrieval to generation stays short

What is deferred

  • agents
  • memory
  • orchestration frameworks
  • multi-stage retrieval pipelines

Those tools may become useful later, but they are not necessary to make this platform credible today.