I once reviewed a project where a team used a powerful LLM but got poorly aligned answers.
The issue was not the LLM. It was the pipeline.
They had taken a Few thousand pages document, split it into random chunks, and stored it in a vector DB.
No metadata. No cleaning. No structure. No consistency.
The LLM was doing its job. The pipeline was not.
A production RAG system requires decisions at every layer.
What chunk size should you choose Should you use fixed-size or semantic chunking What metadata improves filtering Which embedding model suits your domain How many chunks should be retrieved Which vector DB fits your scale What context-window does your model support How do you evaluate responses objectively
When all these decisions come together, the system feels magical.
When even one layer breaks, the entire solution becomes unreliable.
People think Gen AI is about the LLM.
It is not.
It is about designing the complete flow around the LLM.
That is what makes a Data Engineer truly valuable today.
If you want to learn Gen AI in a way like never before, then DM me to know about my Gen AI program starting tomorrow.
Sumit Mittal
Why Most RAG Projects Fail Before They Even Start
I once reviewed a project where a team used a powerful LLM but got poorly aligned answers.
The issue was not the LLM.
It was the pipeline.
They had taken a Few thousand pages document, split it into random chunks, and stored it in a vector DB.
No metadata.
No cleaning.
No structure.
No consistency.
The LLM was doing its job.
The pipeline was not.
A production RAG system requires decisions at every layer.
What chunk size should you choose
Should you use fixed-size or semantic chunking
What metadata improves filtering
Which embedding model suits your domain
How many chunks should be retrieved
Which vector DB fits your scale
What context-window does your model support
How do you evaluate responses objectively
When all these decisions come together, the system feels magical.
When even one layer breaks, the entire solution becomes unreliable.
People think Gen AI is about the LLM.
It is not.
It is about designing the complete flow around the LLM.
That is what makes a Data Engineer truly valuable today.
If you want to learn Gen AI in a way like never before, then DM me to know about my Gen AI program starting tomorrow.
#genai
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 41