Tag
#ai-engineering
Why Retrieval and Reasoning Should Be Separate
Retrieval-augmented generation collapses two very different failure modes into one system when retrieval and reasoning aren't treated as distinct stages with distinct contracts.
Designing Deterministic Boundaries Around Probabilistic AI
LLMs are probabilistic components. Reliable systems are built by deciding, explicitly, which parts of the system are allowed to be probabilistic and wrapping everything else in code that behaves the same way every time.
What Is a Vector Database?
What a vector database actually adds on top of raw embeddings — approximate nearest neighbor search at scale — and the trade-offs that come with the word "approximate."
What Are Vector Embeddings?
How text becomes a point in space, why "similar" ends up meaning something precise and measurable, and where that precision quietly breaks down.
What Is an LLM?
A precise mental model for what a large language model actually computes, why that computation is useful, and where its limits come from structurally rather than incidentally.