I ve been building RAG Orchestration Studio around one core idea: RAG is not just a vector database pattern, it is a retrieval architecture problem.
A lot of teams still start with embeddings, a vector DB, and top-k retrieval, then try to force the problem into that shape. But many real-world retrieval systems depend on structure, relationships, metadata, temporal context, and precision requirements.
I m curious how others here are thinking about retrieval design in practice.
When you work on RAG systems, how do you decide between: