Quality Gates

Agent memory, RAG, state, and context are often used as if they were interchangeable. They are not. This practical architecture model separates the four layers, shows where each belongs, and explains what breaks when systems collapse them into one.

When a RAG answer is wrong, blaming retrieval or the model is too vague. This diagnostic method isolates source coverage, query construction, retrieval, ranking, context assembly, generation, evidence attribution, and freshness—so the actual failure can be reproduced and fixed.

Running a local model with Ollama is easy. Building a production-ready Open-LLM application is harder: it requires RAG, access control, provider abstraction, evaluation, logging, deployment discipline and a controlled application layer around the model.