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.

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)

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.

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.

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

The LLM selects tools based on their description

field. Precise, distinguishing descriptions produce correct tool selection. Vague descriptions produce random behavior.

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 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'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.

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

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.

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

AI Production Operations Guide(Japanese — English Dev.to series coming soon)

Everything built in this series is in one repository:

github.com/qameqame/pgvector-tutorial

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

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