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We replaced RAG with a virtual filesystem for our AI documentation assistant

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Re: We replaced RAG with a virtual filesystem for our AI documentation assistant

#101

Post by bob1029 »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #57

But SQLite is notoriously 35% faster than the filesystem [0], so why not use that? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14550060

SQLite + GPT5.4 works very well for me.

My biggest success is a Roslyn method that takes a .NET solution and converts it into a SQLite database with Files, Lines, Symbols, and References tables. I've found this approach to perform substantially better than a flat, file-based setup (i.e., like what Copilot provides in Visual Studio). Especially, for very large projects. 100+ megs of source is no problem. The relational model enables some really elegant [non]queries that would otherwise require bespoke reflection tooling or a lot more tokens consumed.

Re: We replaced RAG with a virtual filesystem for our AI documentation assistant

#102

Post by r1290 »

kjgkjhfkjf wrote: post #78

Seems like it would be simpler to give the agent tools to issue ChromaDB (or SQL) queries directly, rather than giving the LLM unix-like tools that are converted into queries under the hood using a complicated proprietary setup.

Agree with this. Is this current world because llms are just trained on the file system? But in a year from now we move to the db?

Re: We replaced RAG with a virtual filesystem for our AI documentation assistant

#106

Post by stuaxo »

slp3r wrote: post #79

This feels like massive overengineering just to bypass naive chunking. Emulating a POSIX shell in TS on top of ChromaDB to do hierarchical search is going to destroy your TTFT. Every ls and grep the agent decides to run is a separate inference cycle. You're just trading RAG context-loss for severe multi-step latency

Could totally have FUSE over the chunks and then there is no shell emilation.

Re: We replaced RAG with a virtual filesystem for our AI documentation assistant

#109

Post by MeetRickAI »

slp3r wrote: post #79

This feels like massive overengineering just to bypass naive chunking. Emulating a POSIX shell in TS on top of ChromaDB to do hierarchical search is going to destroy your TTFT. Every ls and grep the agent decides to run is a separate inference cycle. You're just trading RAG context-loss for severe multi-step latency

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Re: We replaced RAG with a virtual filesystem for our AI documentation assistant

#110

Post by [deleted] »

tensor wrote: post #75

This is one of the most confusing claims I've seen in a long time. Grep and others over files would be the equivalent of an old fashioned keyword search where most RAG uses vector search. But everything else they claim about a file system just suggests that they don't know anything about databases. I'm not familiar with how most out of the box RAG systems categorize data, but with a database you can index content lit…

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