Agents vs Pipelines: When Autonomy Is Worth the Reliability Cost
Constrain to a pipeline until evals prove the workflow genuinely needs an agent's judgment. Default to less agent, not more.
Read the guide → Compare
Decisions, made deliberately.
The architecture calls that come up on every engagement, framed as a choice: a comparison matrix, the tradeoffs, and a stated default recommendation.
Open-Weight Models vs Frontier APIs: The Real Cost/Control Tradeoff
Default to a frontier API until volume, compliance, or control needs force the switch. Self-hosting is an operations commitment first and a cost decision second.
Read the guide →RAG vs Fine-Tuning: Which One Actually Solves Your Problem
Default to retrieval. Fine-tune only when you need a fixed output form or a latency budget retrieval can't hit, not just 'better answers.'
Read the guide →Vector Database vs pgvector: Do You Actually Need a Dedicated Store
Start on pgvector. Migrate to a dedicated vector database only when you hit a measured scale, latency, or feature ceiling it can't clear, not preemptively.
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