Infrastructure Requirements: Ingestion, Retrieval, and Generation Layers (Airweave)
~14 min read
The book's full breakdown of what each of the 3 layers actually requires — and Airweave, its named open-source reference implementation across 30+ apps and databases.
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Key points
- •Ingestion layer: auth across apps without headaches, source-specific processing (email vs code vs calendar), and change detection that avoids unnecessary full re-embedding
- •Retrieval layer: query expansion, routing to the right sources, layering semantic/keyword/graph search strategies, access-control enforcement, and weighing old vs. new info
- •Generation layer: provide a citation-backed LLM response so the user can verify where the answer came from
- •Airweave is the book's named real implementation — 100% open-source, spanning 30+ apps and databases, implementing all of the above
- •The book flags a real subtlety in update detection: a changed timestamp alone doesn't mean content changed (e.g. only a permission changed) — naive timestamp-only checks cause unnecessary re-embedding