Retrieval-augmented generation gets talked about like a solved problem. It isn't. The gap between a RAG demo and a RAG system your support team trusts comes down to a handful of unglamorous engineering decisions.
Chunking matters more than the model
Most hallucination issues we've debugged traced back to bad chunking, not a weak model. Semantic chunking that respects document structure — headings, tables, lists — consistently outperforms fixed-size character chunking.
Always show your sources
Every production RAG system we ship surfaces the retrieved passages alongside the answer. It builds user trust, and it makes debugging a bad answer a five-minute task instead of a guessing game.
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