| Architecture | Document-based (RAG), Entity-based (Graph), Hybrid | Match to query patterns; start simple, add complexity when needed |
| Document-based | Vector DB (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector) | Best for docs, FAQs, manuals; semantic search; easy to add content |
| Entity-based | Graph DB (Neo4j, ArangoDB) | Best for org charts, catalogs, networks; relationship traversal |
| Hybrid | Both + linking layer | Enterprise, medical, legal; combined queries; highest complexity |
| When to skip KB | Static docs, <50 FAQ items | No maintenance resources, information never changes |
| Implementation | 6 phases | Audit, Curation, Storage, Quality, Versioning, Governance |
| Accuracy target | >90% on test questions | Create 100+ test questions with known correct answers |
| Coverage target | >80% questions answerable | Validate against real user queries continuously |
| Freshness target | <30 days average age | Automated freshness monitoring + scheduled updates |
| Consistency target | >95% conflict-free | Deduplication + single source of truth |
| Query latency | <100ms median | Caching and optimization for common access patterns |
| Storage tech | pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma | pgvector for existing Postgres; Pinecone for managed scale |
| Index types | HNSW, IVFFlat | HNSW for recall; IVFFlat for frequently rebuilt indexes |
| Ingestion pipeline | Load, clean, chunk, embed, store | Chunk at semantic boundaries; 512 tokens max; 10-15% overlap |
| Deduplication | Content hashing, semantic similarity | Hash for exact dupes; cosine similarity >0.95 for semantic dupes |
| Quality testing | Recall@K, MRR, accuracy sampling | 100+ test questions; measure recall@10 >0.8 and MRR >0.7 |
| Drift detection | Embedding distribution monitoring | Track mean shift; alert when >0.1 threshold |
| Versioning | Snapshot, Event-sourced, Git-style | Snapshot for simple; event-sourced for audit; git-style for teams |
| Maintenance | Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly | Establish schedule from day 1; monitor errors and user feedback |