Knowledge Graph Integration: Structured Reasoning for LLM Applications

Introduction: Vector search finds semantically similar content, but it misses the structured relationships that make knowledge truly useful. Knowledge graphs capture entities and their relationships explicitly—who works where, what depends on what, how concepts connect. Combining knowledge graphs with LLMs creates systems that can reason over structured relationships while generating natural language responses. This guide… Continue reading

LLM Fine-Tuning Strategies: From Data Preparation to Production Deployment

Introduction: Fine-tuning transforms general-purpose language models into specialized tools for your domain. While prompting works for many tasks, fine-tuning delivers consistent behavior, lower latency, and reduced token costs when you need the model to reliably follow specific formats, use domain terminology, or exhibit particular reasoning patterns. This guide covers practical fine-tuning strategies: preparing high-quality training… Continue reading

Retrieval Reranking Techniques: From Cross-Encoders to LLM-Based Scoring

Introduction: Initial retrieval casts a wide net—vector search or keyword matching returns candidates that might be relevant. Reranking narrows the focus, using more expensive but accurate models to score each candidate against the query. Cross-encoders process query-document pairs together, capturing fine-grained semantic relationships that bi-encoders miss. This two-stage approach balances efficiency with accuracy: fast retrieval… Continue reading

Context Distillation Methods: Extracting Signal from Long Documents

Introduction: Long contexts contain valuable information, but they also contain noise, redundancy, and irrelevant details that consume tokens and dilute model attention. Context distillation extracts the essential information from lengthy documents, conversations, or retrieved passages, producing compact representations that preserve what matters while discarding what doesn’t. This technique is crucial for RAG systems processing multiple… Continue reading

Inference Optimization Patterns: Maximizing LLM Throughput and Efficiency

Introduction: LLM inference is expensive—both in compute and latency. Every token generated requires a forward pass through billions of parameters, and users expect responses in seconds, not minutes. Inference optimization techniques reduce costs and improve responsiveness without sacrificing output quality. This guide covers practical optimization strategies: batching requests to maximize GPU utilization, managing KV caches… Continue reading

Structured Output Generation: Reliable JSON from Language Models

Introduction: LLMs generate text, but applications need structured data—JSON objects, database records, API payloads. Getting reliable structured output from language models requires more than asking nicely in the prompt. This guide covers practical techniques for structured generation: defining schemas with Pydantic or JSON Schema, using constrained decoding to guarantee valid output, implementing retry logic with… Continue reading