If you've been told you need a RAG system, you've probably also been told it will solve your AI hallucination problem, make your chatbot smarter, and integrate your company's knowledge base. Some of that is true. RAG is genuinely powerful for specific use cases. But it's also applied in the wrong contexts constantly. Here's what RAG actually is, when it's the right tool, and — more importantly — when something simpler will do the job better.
The simple version: what RAG is in one paragraph
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What problem RAG actually solves
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Three use cases where RAG is clearly the right call
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Three cases where RAG is overkill
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The architecture behind a production RAG system
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How we built RAG for Panoramic on Amazon Bedrock
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See the Panoramic case study for a real example of enterprise RAG on AWS — including architecture, security controls, and outcomes.
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