Tagged “tradeoffs”
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Cache-Augmented Generation, and Whether You Qualify
Cache-augmented generation preloads the whole corpus once and reuses it. Four preconditions decide whether you qualify, and most teams fail one.
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Is RAG Still Worth Building?
Long context, agentic search and better models keep being called RAG's replacement. What actually goes away, what doesn't, and how to decide now.
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Latency Budgets for Retrieval
Where the milliseconds go in a RAG request, which stages you can cut when your target is under two seconds, and what each cut costs you.
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RAG Versus Fine-Tuning as an Architecture Decision
Not which is more accurate — which one leaves you able to fix a wrong answer on a Tuesday afternoon. An ownership-first comparison.
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RAG Versus Long Context: The Cost Arithmetic
Both architectures work. They have different cost curves, and the crossover depends on three variables you can estimate this afternoon.
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Choosing a Model Size for the Generation Step
In a grounded system the model does less work than you think. How to decide whether you need the expensive one, and how to route so you mostly don't.
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Scoping a Proof of Concept That Decides Something
Most RAG pilots prove only that the technology exists. How to scope one that answers the question you actually have to answer.
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The Cost of Being Wrong
Put a number on what one bad answer costs you, and the architecture decision makes itself. A method for sizing error cost before you build.
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Choosing a Freshness Requirement You Can Afford
How current your index must be is a business decision with an engineering price. Set it deliberately, per document type, before it gets set by default.
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Self-Hosting Your Embedding Model: When It Pays
The arithmetic for running an open-weight embedding model yourself, the three non-cost reasons that decide it, and why the crossover is far off.
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Embedding Model Lock-In and What Switching Costs
Changing your embedding model means re-embedding everything and re-validating quality. How to price that now so it stays a decision rather than a trap.
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RAG or Tool Calls: Which One Does Your Question Need?
Retrieval reads documents; tool calls query systems. Most projects need both, and the split between them decides how much you have to maintain.
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Choosing an Architecture by How It Fails
Every option for answering questions from your documents fails differently. Pick the failure mode your users and your business can actually survive.
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Scaling Thresholds for a Retrieval System
The four points where a retrieval architecture stops working and has to be redesigned — and how to tell which one you are approaching.
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Corpus Drift and What It Costs You
A retrieval system's quality decays even when nothing in the code changes. Where the decay comes from, and how to price it into the decision up front.