AI Data Engineering

Purpose

Build data infrastructure for AI/ML systems including RAG pipelines, feature stores, and embedding generation. Provides architecture patterns, orchestration workflows, and evaluation metrics for production AI applications.

When to Use

Use this skill when:

• Building RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipelines
• Implementing semantic search or vector databases
• Setting up ML feature stores for real-time serving
• Creating embedding generation pipelines
• Evaluating RAG quality with RAGAS metrics
• Orchestrating data workflows for AI systems
• Integrating with frontend skills (ai-chat, search-filter)

Skip this skill if:

• Building traditional CRUD applications (use databases-relational)
• Simple key-value storage (use databases-nosql)
• No AI/ML components in the application

RAG Pipeline Architecture

RAG pipelines have 5 distinct stages. Understanding this architecture is critical for production implementations.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    RAG Pipeline (5 Stages)                   │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                                                              │
│  1. INGESTION → Load documents (PDF, DOCX, Markdown)        │
│  2. INDEXING → Chunk (512 tokens) + Embed + Store           │
│  3. RETRIEVAL → Query embedding + Vector search + Filters   │
│  4. GENERATION → Context injection + LLM streaming          │
│  5. EVALUATION → RAGAS metrics (faithfulness, relevancy)    │
│                                                              │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

For complete RAG architecture with implementation patterns, see:

• references/rag-architecture.md - Detailed 5-stage breakdown
• examples/langchain-rag/basic_rag.py - Working implementation

Chunking Strategies

Chunking is the most critical decision for RAG quality. Poor chunking breaks retrieval.

Default Recommendation:

• Size: 512 tokens
• Overlap: 50-100 tokens
• Method: Fixed token-based

Why these values:

• Too small (<256 tokens): Loses context, requires many retrievals
• Too large (>1024 tokens): Includes irrelevant content, hits token limits
• Overlap prevents information loss at chunk boundaries

Alternative strategies for special cases:

# Code-aware chunking (preserves functions/classes)
from langchain.text_splitter import RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter

code_splitter = RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter.from_language(
    language="python",
    chunk_size=512,
    chunk_overlap=50
)

# Semantic chunking (splits on meaning, not tokens)
from langchain.text_splitter import SemanticChunker

semantic_splitter = SemanticChunker(
    embeddings=embeddings,
    breakpoint_threshold_type="percentile"  # Split at semantic boundaries
)

See: references/chunking-strategies.md for complete decision framework

Embedding Generation

Embedding quality directly impacts retrieval accuracy. Voyage AI is currently best-in-class.

Primary Recommendation: Voyage AI voyage-3

• Dimensions: 1024
• MTEB Score: 69.0 (highest as of Dec 2025)
• Cost: $$$ but 9.74% better than OpenAI
• Use for: Production systems requiring best retrieval quality

Cost-Effective Alternative: OpenAI text-embedding-3-small

• Dimensions: 1536
• MTEB Score: 62.3
• Cost: $ (5x cheaper than voyage-3)
• Use for: Development, prototyping, cost-sensitive applications

Implementation:

from langchain_voyageai import VoyageAIEmbeddings
from langchain_openai import OpenAIEmbeddings

# Production (best quality)
embeddings = VoyageAIEmbeddings(
    model="voyage-3",
    voyage_api_key="your-api-key"
)

# Development (cost-effective)
embeddings = OpenAIEmbeddings(
    model="text-embedding-3-small",
    openai_api_key="your-api-key"
)

See: references/embedding-strategies.md for complete provider comparison

RAGAS Evaluation Metrics

Traditional metrics (BLEU, ROUGE) don't measure RAG quality. RAGAS provides LLM-as-judge evaluation.

4 Core Metrics:

Quick evaluation script:

# Run RAGAS evaluation (TOKEN-FREE script execution)
python scripts/evaluate_rag.py --dataset eval_data.json --output results.json

Manual implementation:

from ragas import evaluate
from ragas.metrics import faithfulness, answer_relevancy

dataset = {
    "question": ["What is the capital of France?"],
    "answer": ["Paris is the capital of France."],
    "contexts": [["France's capital is Paris."]],
    "ground_truth": ["Paris"]
}

result = evaluate(dataset, metrics=[faithfulness, answer_relevancy])
print(f"Faithfulness: {result['faithfulness']}")
print(f"Answer Relevancy: {result['answer_relevancy']}")

See: references/evaluation-metrics.md for complete RAGAS implementation guide

Feature Stores

Feature stores solve the "training-serving skew" problem by providing consistent feature computation.

Primary Recommendation: Feast - Open source, works with any backend (PostgreSQL, Redis, DynamoDB, S3, BigQuery, Snowflake)

Basic usage:

from feast import FeatureStore
store = FeatureStore(repo_path="feature_repo/")

# Online serving (low-latency)
features = store.get_online_features(
    features=["user_features:total_orders"],
    entity_rows=[{"user_id": 1001}]
).to_dict()

See: references/feature-stores.md for complete Feast setup and alternatives (Tecton, Hopsworks)

LangChain Orchestration

LangChain is the primary framework for LLM orchestration with the largest ecosystem (24,215+ API reference snippets).

Context7 Library ID: /websites/langchain_oss_python_langchain (Trust: High, Snippets: 435)

Basic RAG Chain:

from langchain_core.prompts import ChatPromptTemplate
from langchain_qdrant import QdrantVectorStore
from langchain_voyageai import VoyageAIEmbeddings

# Setup retriever
vectorstore = QdrantVectorStore(
    client=qdrant_client,
    embedding=VoyageAIEmbeddings(model="voyage-3")
)
retriever = vectorstore.as_retriever(search_type="mmr", search_kwargs={"k": 5})

# Build chain
prompt = ChatPromptTemplate.from_template(
    "Answer based on context:\n{context}\n\nQuestion: {question}"
)
chain = {"context": retriever, "question": lambda x: x} | prompt | ChatOpenAI() | StrOutputParser()

# Stream response
for chunk in chain.stream("What is the capital of France?"):
    print(chunk, end="", flush=True)

See: references/langchain-patterns.md - Complete LangChain 0.3+ patterns with streaming and hybrid search

Orchestration Tools

Modern AI pipelines require workflow orchestration beyond cron jobs.

Primary Recommendation: Dagster (for ML/AI pipelines) - Asset-centric design, best lineage tracking, perfect for RAG

Example: Embedding Pipeline

from dagster import asset
from langchain_voyageai import VoyageAIEmbeddings

@asset
def raw_documents():
    """Load documents from S3."""
    return documents

@asset
def chunked_documents(raw_documents):
    """Split into 512-token chunks with 50-token overlap."""
    from langchain.text_splitter import RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter
    splitter = RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter(chunk_size=512, chunk_overlap=50)
    return splitter.split_documents(raw_documents)

@asset
def embedded_documents(chunked_documents):
    """Generate embeddings with Voyage AI."""
    embeddings = VoyageAIEmbeddings(model="voyage-3")
    return embeddings.embed_documents([doc.page_content for doc in chunked_documents])

See: references/orchestration-tools.md for complete Dagster patterns and alternatives (Prefect, Airflow 3.0, dbt)

Integration with Frontend Skills

ai-chat Skill → RAG Backend

The ai-chat skill consumes RAG pipeline outputs for streaming responses.

Backend API (FastAPI):

from fastapi import FastAPI
from fastapi.responses import StreamingResponse

@app.post("/api/rag/stream")
async def stream_rag(query: str):
    async def generate():
        chain = RetrievalQA.from_chain_type(llm=OpenAI(streaming=True), retriever=vectorstore.as_retriever())
        async for chunk in chain.astream(query):
            yield chunk
    return StreamingResponse(generate(), media_type="text/plain")

See: references/rag-architecture.md for complete frontend integration patterns

search-filter Skill → Semantic Search

The search-filter skill uses semantic search backends for vector similarity.

Backend (Qdrant + Voyage AI):

from qdrant_client import QdrantClient
from langchain_voyageai import VoyageAIEmbeddings

@app.post("/api/search/semantic")
async def semantic_search(query: str, filters: dict):
    query_vector = VoyageAIEmbeddings(model="voyage-3").embed_query(query)
    results = QdrantClient().search(
        collection_name="documents",
        query_vector=query_vector,
        query_filter=filters,
        limit=10
    )
    return {"results": results}

Data Versioning

Primary Recommendation: LakeFS (acquired DVC team November 2025)

Git-like operations on data lakes: branch, commit, merge, time travel. Works with S3/Azure/GCS.

import lakefs

branch = lakefs.Branch("main").create("experiment-voyage-3")
branch.commit("Updated embeddings to voyage-3")
branch.merge_into("main")

See: references/data-versioning.md for complete LakeFS setup

Quick Start Workflow

1. Set up vector database:

# Run Qdrant setup script (TOKEN-FREE execution)
python scripts/setup_qdrant.py --collection docs --dimension 1024

2. Chunk and embed documents:

# Chunk documents (TOKEN-FREE execution)
python scripts/chunk_documents.py \
  --input data/documents/ \
  --chunk-size 512 \
  --overlap 50 \
  --output data/chunks/

3. Implement RAG pipeline:

See examples/langchain-rag/basic_rag.py for complete working example.

4. Evaluate with RAGAS:

# Run evaluation (TOKEN-FREE execution)
python scripts/evaluate_rag.py \
  --dataset data/eval_qa.json \
  --output results/ragas_metrics.json

5. Deploy with orchestration:

See examples/dagster-pipelines/embedding_pipeline.py for production deployment.

Dependencies

Required Python packages:

# Core RAG
pip install langchain langchain-core langchain-openai langchain-voyageai langchain-qdrant

# Vector database
pip install qdrant-client

# Evaluation
pip install ragas datasets

# Feature stores
pip install feast

# Orchestration
pip install dagster dagster-webserver

# Data versioning
pip install lakefs-client

Optional for alternatives:

# LlamaIndex (alternative to LangChain)
pip install llama-index

# dbt (SQL transformations)
pip install dbt-core dbt-postgres

# Prefect (alternative orchestration)
pip install prefect

Troubleshooting

Common Issues:

1. Poor retrieval quality - Check chunk size (try 512 tokens), increase overlap (50-100), try hybrid search, re-rank with Cohere

2. Slow embedding generation - Batch documents (100-1000), use async APIs, cache with Redis, use smaller model for dev

3. High LLM costs - Reduce retrieved chunks (k=3), use cheaper re-ranking models, cache frequent queries

See: references/rag-architecture.md for complete troubleshooting guide

Best Practices

Chunking: Default to 512 tokens with 50-token overlap. Use semantic chunking for complex documents. Preserve code structure for source code.

Embeddings: Use Voyage AI voyage-3 for production, OpenAI text-embedding-3-small for development. Never mix embedding models (re-embed everything if changing).

Evaluation: Run RAGAS metrics on every pipeline change. Maintain test dataset of 50+ question-answer pairs. Track metrics over time.

Orchestration: Use Dagster for ML/AI pipelines, dbt for SQL transformations only. Version control all pipeline code.

Frontend Integration: Always stream LLM responses. Implement retry logic. Show citations/sources to users. Handle empty results gracefully.

Additional Resources

Reference Documentation:

• references/rag-architecture.md - Complete RAG pipeline guide
• references/chunking-strategies.md - Decision framework for chunking
• references/embedding-strategies.md - Embedding model comparison
• references/langchain-patterns.md - LangChain 0.3+ patterns
• references/feature-stores.md - Feast setup and alternatives
• references/evaluation-metrics.md - RAGAS implementation guide

Working Examples:

• examples/langchain-rag/basic_rag.py - Simple RAG chain
• examples/langchain-rag/streaming_rag.py - Streaming responses
• examples/langchain-rag/hybrid_search.py - Vector + BM25
• examples/llamaindex-agents/query_engine.py - LlamaIndex alternative
• examples/feast-features/ - Complete feature store setup
• examples/dagster-pipelines/embedding_pipeline.py - Production pipeline

Executable Scripts (TOKEN-FREE):

• scripts/evaluate_rag.py - RAGAS evaluation runner
• scripts/chunk_documents.py - Document chunking utility
• scripts/benchmark_retrieval.py - Retrieval quality benchmark
• scripts/setup_qdrant.py - Qdrant collection setup