Building a RAG System from Scratch — Wrap-up and What Comes Next

In this final article, we'll recap what we built across the series, consolidate the design decisions, and point to where to go next.

What We Built

Starting from a blank Python project, we built a complete AI system step by step:

01_setup_db.py       pgvector table + extension

02_create_index.py   HNSW index (m=16, ef_construction=64)

03_ingest.py         Embed documents → store in pgvector

04_search.py         Cosine similarity search

05_rag.py            Full RAG pipeline



06_tool_basic.py     LLM decides whether to search

07_tool_multi.py     LLM routes between multiple tools

08_tool_agent.py     Multi-step agentic loop



09_agent_basic.py    ReAct pattern

10_agent_memory.py   Persistent memory across sessions

11_agent_planner.py  Plan → Execute → Evaluate



mcp_server/

  server.py          MCP server (stdio, Claude Desktop)

  server_http.py     MCP server (HTTP)

  server_render.py   MCP server (Render deployment)



12_mcp_agent.py      Agent via MCP (local)

13_mcp_http_agent.py Agent via MCP (cloud)

Design Decisions at a Glance

pgvector over a dedicated vector DB

pgvector integrates with existing PostgreSQL, supports SQL + vector in one query, and handles millions of documents comfortably. Start here and migrate only when you have evidence you need to.

768 dimensions

gemini-embedding-001 outputs 3072 dims by default, but pgvector's HNSW index has a 2000-dim hard limit. 768 dims stays well within bounds with negligible quality loss.

Asymmetric task_type

Use RETRIEVAL_DOCUMENT when storing, RETRIEVAL_QUERY when searching. The Gemini embedding model is trained to map queries toward documents, not to the same point. Using the same task type for both degrades retrieval accuracy.

HNSW over IVFFlat

HNSW requires no training data, delivers consistent recall at scale, and is faster at query time. IVFFlat is only worth considering under tight memory constraints.

Tool description is routing logic

The LLM selects tools based on their description field. Precise, distinguishing descriptions produce correct tool selection. Vague descriptions produce random behavior.

The conversation history is the agent's memory

Each tool call and result gets appended to contents. The LLM reads the full history on every step — this is how multi-step reasoning works.

MCP makes tools infrastructure

MCP turns hardcoded functions into a standalone server. Claude Desktop, Gemini agents, and any future client can connect to the same server without duplicating tool definitions.

Render + Supabase for zero-cost cloud deployment

Render's free web service hosts the MCP server. Supabase's free tier hosts pgvector. The Connection Pooler (port 6543) is mandatory — Render doesn't support the IPv6 used by Supabase's standard port 5432.

The Architecture We Ended Up With

Local:

  Claude Desktop

      ↓ stdio

  mcp_server/server.py

      ↓ psycopg2

  pgvector (Docker)



Cloud:

  Python agent (13_mcp_http_agent.py)

      ↓ HTTPS

  Render (server_render.py)

      ↓ PostgreSQL + SSL (port 6543)

  Supabase (pgvector)

      ↓

  Gemini Embedding + LLM

What This Series Did Not Cover

This series focused on getting a production-ready RAG system off the ground. Several important topics are out of scope here:

Evaluation (Evals) — How do you know if your RAG is actually working? You need automated quality measurement: Context Recall, Answer Relevancy, and Faithfulness scoring.

Observability — When something goes wrong in production, how do you debug it? Tracing each step with a tool like Langfuse tells you exactly where latency or quality issues originate.

Security — How do you handle adversarial inputs? Prompt injection, jailbreaks, and PII leakage are real threats in any public-facing RAG system.

MLOps / LLMOps — How do you ship changes safely? Prompt versioning, CI/CD quality gates, and API cost tracking become essential when the system is in production.

Fine-tuning — When the base model doesn't behave the way you need, LoRA fine-tuning lets you adapt it to your domain with surprisingly little data and compute.

Multi-Agent Systems — When a single agent isn't enough, orchestrator-worker patterns distribute work across specialized agents.

Governance — The EU AI Act is now fully in force. Compliance for a chatbot system means AI disclosure notices, audit logging, and a documented risk assessment.

All of these are covered in Vol.2 of this series.

Vol.2: Production Operations Guide

The second series picks up where this one leaves off — taking a working RAG system and making it production-grade.

The README covers setup, directory structure, and the reasoning behind each design decision.

Series Index

4. Cloud Deployment — Render × Supabase


5. 
   Wrap-up and Next Steps (this article)

Thanks for following along. If you found this useful, the GitHub repo and Vol.2 are the best places to continue.