Practical guides

Understand the choices.
Build with confidence.

Go beyond individual tools. Work through the decisions, tradeoffs, and failure cases that shape reliable AI applications.

AI application performance13 min read

Why AI responses are slow: tracing retrieval, tools and model generation

Separate first-visible-answer delay from completion time, map the request's required work, and choose the next measurement for retrieval, tools, queueing or generation.

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RAG reliability11 min read

Why RAG retrieves relevant documents but still gives wrong answers

Trace a wrong RAG answer through source coverage, retrieval, context assembly, and generation, then choose a diagnostic that targets the failing boundary.

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Agent reliability15 min read

Agent memory, checkpoints, and durable workflows: choosing what to persist

Choose what must survive a conversation, a worker crash, and an external action, with a worked refund scenario and concrete recovery checks.

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