RAG Pipeline Production Architecture 2026: Chunking, Retrieval, Re-ranking, and Evaluation
Most RAG tutorials get you from zero to a working demo in 30 minutes. Production RAG takes 6–12 months to get right, and the problems that sink it are not the ones covered in the tutorial. This is the production engineering guide: chunking strategy, hybrid retrieval, re-ranking, evaluation frameworks, and the operational patterns that keep RAG systems working after launch.