Softment

AI Development

RAG Development Services

We build Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems that answer from your documents—not guesses. Expect clean ingestion, tuned retrieval, citations, and an evaluation loop that improves accuracy over time.

First step1–2 week opportunity sprint
Entry engagement$3k–$5k USD
Security-first AI integrations • Evals + logging + guardrails included

Overview

What this service is

RAG combines search with LLM responses: it retrieves relevant source passages and then generates an answer grounded in those sources.

We engineer the full stack—connectors, chunking, embeddings, hybrid search, reranking, and access control—so retrieval is reliable in real conditions.

You get monitoring and evaluation tests so your team can iterate without breaking quality as content and prompts evolve.

Standard

AI delivery standard

Quality and safety practices we ship with AI builds so the system stays measurable, maintainable, and production-ready.

Logging + tracing

Conversation and tool traces with request IDs, error visibility, and debug-friendly runbooks.

Guardrails + safety

Tool allowlists, PII-safe patterns, refusal behavior, and escalation routes for edge cases.

Evals + regression tests

Golden queries, scorecards, and regression checks so quality improves over time instead of drifting.

Cost + latency controls

Caching, prompt discipline, retrieval tuning, and routing so your app stays fast and predictable at scale.

Documentation + handoff

Architecture notes, environment setup, and next-step roadmap so your team can iterate safely after launch.

Security-first integration

Secrets isolation, role-based access, audit-friendly actions, and minimal data retention by design.

Benefits

What you get

Lower hallucinations with source-grounded answers

Better retrieval quality via hybrid search + reranking

Safer UX with citations and low-confidence fallbacks

Freshness via incremental indexing pipelines

Permission-aware access for internal/tenant data

Measurable accuracy via eval sets and regression tests

Features

What we deliver

Ingestion pipelines

Connect PDFs, docs, wikis, websites, help centers, tickets, and databases with clean normalization and metadata.

Chunking + metadata strategy

Right-sized chunks with stable IDs, versioning, and filters so retrieval stays accurate as content changes.

Vector database setup

Schema, indexing, backups, and performance tuning for Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate, or pgvector based on your constraints.

Hybrid search + reranking

Combine keyword + semantic retrieval and rerank results to improve precision for exact terms, error codes, and product names.

Citations + excerpt UX

Answers include sources and highlighted passages so users can verify and drill into the original content.

Evaluation + monitoring

Golden queries, regression checks, retrieval metrics, and dashboards so quality improves continuously after launch.

Process

How we work

1
2–4 days

Discovery

Sources, permissions, query goals, and evaluation criteria.

2
4–8 days

Ingestion

Connectors, parsing, normalization, and metadata.

3
1–2 weeks

Retrieval

Embeddings, vector DB, hybrid search, and reranking.

4
3–6 days

Answer UX

Citations, excerpt UI, and fallback behavior.

5
4–8 days

Evals + launch

Regression tests, monitoring, and rollout plan.

Tech Stack

Technologies we use

Core

OpenAI / AnthropicEmbeddingsHybrid searchReranking

Tools

Pinecone / Qdrant / Weaviatepgvector (Postgres)LangChain / SDK-firstNext.js

Services

Node.js / PythonSentry / tracing

Use Cases

Who this is for

Support knowledge base assistant

Answer tickets from docs and policies with citations and escalation when evidence is weak.

Internal SOP / runbook search

Search across internal procedures and knowledge while respecting access rules and audit needs.

Product docs + developer assistant

Explain APIs, error codes, and configuration with precise citations and up-to-date versioning.

Compliance / policy Q&A

Ground answers in official policy docs, track sources, and provide safe “I can’t confirm” fallbacks.

Sales enablement assistant

Find the right case studies, pricing rules, and product positioning fast—without misinformation.

Implementation Patterns

How we frame common AI workflows

Illustrative patterns only—not client case studies, endorsements, or production-result claims.

Regulated mobile data workflow pattern

Challenge: Sensitive data workflows need explicit access boundaries, traceability, and documented operating responsibilities.

Approach: Threat-model the workflow, map authorization rules, select encryption controls, and define auditable state transitions.

Validation: Test access boundaries and recovery paths, record residual risk, and obtain any required independent compliance assessment.

Large knowledge-base retrieval pattern

Challenge: Long, mixed-format source collections need traceable retrieval and safe behavior when evidence is weak.

Approach: Evaluate hybrid retrieval, reranking, citations, structured outputs, and defined fallback or human-review paths.

Validation: Use a representative offline evaluation set and report citation quality, latency, and cost under documented test conditions.

Operations automation pattern

Challenge: Approval and system-sync workflows need deterministic controls around exceptions, retries, and ownership.

Approach: Model the workflow, add validation and approval gates, and use AI only for bounded classification or extraction tasks.

Validation: Baseline manual steps, test exception paths and audit logs, then compare pilot measurements before considering wider rollout.

Decision Guides

Not sure which to choose?

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

It depends on your constraints. Pinecone is managed and operationally simple, Qdrant/Weaviate are great for self-hosting, and pgvector is strong if you’re already on Postgres. We recommend based on scale, cost, and infra preferences.

Yes. We can implement per-user or per-tenant filtering, source-level permissions, and auth integration so retrieval respects access rules.

We improve retrieval quality, require citations/excerpts, add low-confidence fallbacks, and test with evaluation queries that reflect real user needs.

We build incremental indexing and scheduled refresh pipelines so new or updated docs are reflected without full re-ingestion.

Yes. Hybrid retrieval and reranking are often the biggest accuracy unlocks for production RAG systems.

A first production RAG system often ships in 3–6 weeks depending on sources, permissions, and UX complexity.

Ready to start?

Want help with RAG development?

Share your requirements and we’ll reply with next steps and a clear plan.

We’ll review the context and reply with a practical next step.