RAG development with the sources shown

Custom enterprise RAG systems that answer from your own documents and data, and cite the source of every answer.

RAG systems we build

The six we build most often, and any other system your knowledge needs.

  1. 01 / 06

    Knowledge search and assistants

    One place for your team to ask across your wikis, shared drives, tickets and databases, with every answer citing the page it came from.

    • Search across every drive, wiki and database
    • Answers that cite the page and the passage
    • Only what each person is allowed to open
    • In your chat tool, your intranet or a search page
  2. 02 / 06

    Chatbots that answer from your content

    Support and help-desk assistants that answer customers or staff only from your own content, and hand over when the answer isn't there.

    • Answers from your help centre, docs and past tickets
    • The sources shown with every reply
    • A person takes over when it can't answer
    • On your website, in your app or in your help desk
  3. 03 / 06

    Documents, tables and scans

    Questions answered across contracts, policies, manuals and reports, with the tables, scans and diagrams in them read too.

    • Contracts, policies, manuals and reports
    • Tables kept as tables, not flattened into text
    • Scanned pages and images read with OCR
    • Answers that point to the clause and the page
  4. 04 / 06

    RAG inside your product

    Search and answers built into your own app or SaaS product, each working on one customer's data and nothing else.

    • An API, or a feature in your own interface
    • Each customer's data kept in its own index
    • Built on the stack your product already runs
    • Cost per answer measured from the first release
  5. 05 / 06

    Private and on-premise RAG

    RAG on your own servers or in your private cloud, with open models, so your documents never leave infrastructure you control.

    • On-premise, in a private cloud or the region your data must stay in
    • Open models, no outside AI service
    • The vector database inside your network
    • Access through your single sign-on
  6. 06 / 06

    Retrieval behind your AI agents

    The knowledge your AI agents look things up in, with the same index and the same permissions, so an agent acts on facts.

    • One index for your assistants and your agents
    • Agents that look things up before they act
    • The same access rules for people and agents
    • Every lookup traced with what it returned

Our RAG development process

Six steps, from a sample of your documents to a system your team trusts with its questions.

  1. 01Scope

    Your sources, real questions and access rules, with a test set of the answers to hit.

  2. 02Ingest

    Documents parsed, scans and tables included, chunked and indexed with their permissions.

  3. 03Retrieval

    Search, reranking and answers that cite their sources, inside your app.

  4. 04Evaluate

    Scored against the test set, with the failures listed and a clear go or no-go.

  5. 05Launch

    Deployed in your environment with single sign-on, access control and monitoring.

  6. 06Maintain

    The index kept fresh, answers reviewed, and cost and accuracy tracked.

The RAG pipeline we build

The parts we build into a RAG system, set for your documents and who reads them.

  • Layout-aware parsing

    PDFs, scans and spreadsheets read with their tables and layout intact, not flattened into text.

  • Structure-aware chunking

    Split by section and clause, so a passage keeps its heading and never stops mid-sentence.

  • Hybrid search and reranking

    Exact words and meaning searched together, then the best passages ranked to the top.

  • Permission-aware retrieval

    Each person gets answers only from documents they can already open in the source system.

  • Citations on every answer

    Each answer names the documents and passages it came from, one click from the original.

  • Honest when it doesn't know

    When the answer isn't in your documents, it says so and points to who might know.

  • Evaluation on your questions

    Real questions with their right answers and sources, run against every change before it ships.

  • Continuous sync

    New and changed documents indexed as they change, and deleted ones removed from answers.

  • Private deployment

    Run in your cloud, on your servers or air-gapped, wherever your data is allowed to live.

Ways to start

Starting something new with AI, or adding it to software you already have.

Something new

  • Build a first version

    An AI MVP with the features that matter most, to launch and learn.

  • Build the whole product

    An AI product designed, built and launched in full, by one team.

  • Extend your team

    AI engineers join your team, or a dedicated team runs the work.

Software you already have

Industries we build software for

Custom software development across industries: web, mobile and AI applications, built and security-audited by one team.

  • A modern hospital patient room in the evening, a made bed beside a patient monitor and an IV stand

    Healthcare & MedTech

    Healthcare and medical software development: patient portals, telemedicine apps, EHR integrations and clinical dashboards.

  • A phone showing a mobile banking app beside a black metal payment card on a stone table

    Fintech & Payments

    Fintech and payment app development: digital wallets, payment gateways, mobile banking apps and lending platforms.

  • A streetwear store with a wall of hoodies and jerseys, a lit sneaker wall and a terrazzo display of tees and caps

    Retail & Ecommerce

    Ecommerce development for online stores, mobile shopping apps, point-of-sale software and inventory management.

  • A brass luggage trolley with suitcases and a coat in a modern hotel lobby, beside the reception desk

    Travel & Hospitality

    Travel and hospitality software: booking engines, hotel management systems, travel apps and supplier integrations.

  • A robotic assembly line in a smart factory, with robot arms in glass cells and autonomous robots carrying parts

    AI & Automation

    AI development and AI automation: AI agents, chatbots, document processing and automated business workflows.

  • A software team's studio with a product roadmap of sticky notes on a whiteboard above a shared desk

    SaaS & Marketplaces

    SaaS and marketplace development: multi-tenant platforms, subscription billing, user roles and vendor payouts.

  • Parcels on a conveyor in a fulfilment warehouse, with tall pallet racking and a forklift behind

    Logistics & Supply Chain

    Logistics and supply chain software: fleet and warehouse management, route planning and shipment tracking.

  • A university library atrium with study tables, glass study rooms and a recording room beneath tiers of bookshelves

    Education & EdTech

    EdTech and education app development: learning management systems, e-learning platforms, virtual classrooms and assessments.

  • A secured glass door with a fingerprint reader beside a long data centre aisle of server racks

    Cybersecurity

    Cybersecurity software: identity and access management, SIEM dashboards and compliance tooling, plus security audits and penetration testing.

  • A newly built apartment's living room and kitchen at dusk, floor-to-ceiling windows onto residential towers and a tower crane

    Real Estate & PropTech

    Real estate and PropTech software development: property management systems, listing portals, agent CRMs and tenant apps.

  • A law firm's double-height library at dusk, a long walnut meeting table laid with a contract, a fountain pen and case binders

    Legal & LegalTech

    Legal software development: case and contract management, legal document management and eDiscovery tools.

  • An esports arena before a final, a fantasy battle map on the giant screen above two lit team desks and a silver cup on a plinth

    Gaming & Esports

    Gaming and esports software: game backends, multiplayer matchmaking, tournament platforms, player accounts and in-game payments.

We also build software for insurance (insurtech), government (govtech), energy and media. If your industry is not listed, we can still build for it.

Software we run in production

Three products of our own, designed, built and kept running by the team that would build your RAG system.

  • Retail · SaaS

    A point-of-sale system that keeps sales, stock and receipts together on till, tablet and phone.

    Screen capture, 1908 × 944
  • Travel

    A travel booking app whose AI assistant finds flights, hotels and trip ideas, through to a confirmed booking.

  • AI

    Silvia AI

    An AI assistant for customer support and sales that answers questions and guides buyers.

    Screen capture, 1908 × 944

Questions about RAG

What teams ask before they let an AI answer from their documents, answered plainly.

Ask your own
Will it work with our documents and systems?

Most likely. We connect to where your knowledge lives — Google Drive, SharePoint, Confluence, Notion, help desks, databases and file shares — and read PDFs, Word and PowerPoint files, spreadsheets and scans. Where a system has an API we sync from it; where it doesn't, we work from regular exports.

What is RAG, and how is it different from fine-tuning a model?

RAG looks up the relevant passages in your documents when a question is asked, and has the model answer from them, citing them. Fine-tuning changes the model itself, which suits a style or a format but doesn't keep facts current or show where they came from. For answering from your knowledge RAG is usually the right choice, and when it isn't, we'll say so.

How do you stop it from making things up?

It answers only from the passages it retrieved, and cites them. When nothing relevant is found, it says the answer isn't in your documents instead of guessing. And every release is scored on a set of your real questions, so a change that makes the answers worse doesn't ship.

Can people only get answers from documents they're allowed to open?

Yes. Permissions are carried over from the source systems and checked at retrieval, so a passage someone couldn't open in SharePoint or Drive never reaches their answer. Access follows your single sign-on, and changes when it changes.

Can it run on our own servers?

Yes. We deploy RAG on-premise, in your private cloud or in an EU region, with open models such as Llama and Mistral where documents can't go to an outside provider. The vector database and the index stay inside your network.

Which models, vector databases and tools do you use?

Claude, GPT, Gemini or open models such as Llama and Mistral; Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant or pgvector; LlamaIndex or LangChain; Unstructured and Docling for parsing, Cohere Rerank for reranking and Ragas for evaluation. We choose by testing on your documents, and none of them locks you in.

How do you measure whether the answers are good?

Before we build, we collect real questions, each with the right answer and its sources. Every change is scored on them — is the right passage found, does the answer keep to it, is it cited — and the score decides whether a change ships.

What happens when our documents change?

The index stays in sync with the sources: new and edited documents are indexed again, and deleted ones disappear from answers. How often is set per source, from every few minutes to nightly.

How long does a first RAG system take?

Collecting the documents and questions and building the evaluation set takes one to two weeks, a prototype on your documents two to six, and production — access control, sync and monitoring — a few weeks more. The estimate sets out the timeline before any work starts.

What does a RAG system cost to build and to run?

Building depends on the sources, the formats and the access rules; after a first call we send a written estimate. Running cost is mostly hosting the index and the model's usage per answer, which we estimate before we build.

Describe your project. Get an estimate.