I've been looking into why so many RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) implementations fail in production, and this data explains a lot. We're seeing a weird split in how companies handle their AI workflow. On one hand, provider-native tools like OpenAI’s file search and Google’s Vertex AI Search are actually dominating the market. On the other hand, a huge chunk of devs still want "best-of-breed" standalone vector databases to avoid vendor lock-in.
The real struggle seems to be the lack of a governed semantic layer. A lot of teams are rushing to build these to fix the inconsistency issues, but most aren't actually in production yet. It feels like everyone is just slapping a vector DB on top of their docs and hoping for the best, then wondering why the LLM agent hallucinates when it hits a gap in the data.
For those of us trying to build a real-world deployment, the trend is clearly moving toward hybrid retrieval. It seems like relying on a single method just isn't cutting it for enterprise-grade reliability.
If you're setting this up from scratch, it feels like the focus needs to shift from "how do I retrieve this?" to "how do I ensure the retrieved data is actually the truth?"
I'm curious if anyone has actually successfully deployed a governed semantic layer that stopped these "confident hallucinations." What does your stack look like?
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