Exercises: Map the RAG Query Lifecycle
Use these exercises to turn a user question into a production-aware execution path: intent, retrieval, metadata, context, answer rules, refusal, and evaluation.
1 Map lifecycle stages
Fill intent, retrieval query, filters, expected source, context rule, answer rule, refusal rule, and metric.
2 Add metadata filters
Add region, role, version, severity, confidentiality, or product-tier filters where needed.
3 Identify first failure point
Separate retrieval, filtering, prompt grounding, generation, citation, and evaluation failures.
4 Create trace logs
Define the fields you would capture for audit, debugging, latency, and cost review.
5 Add execution pipeline steps
Add access checks, cache lookup, reranking, safety checks, or escalation where needed.
6 Write refusal behavior
Write calm, useful refusal messages when the right evidence is missing.
7 Add a golden eval
Create expected source, expected behavior, bad answer to catch, and metric.
8 Explain to a teammate
Write the lifecycle in simple language for PM, QA, frontend, and platform teammates.