Build RAG Chatbot with LangChain, Milvus, Mistral AI Mistral Nemo, and OpenAI text-embedding-ada-002

Introduction to RAG

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is a game-changer for GenAI applications, especially in conversational AI. It combines the power of pre-trained large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s GPT with external knowledge sources stored in vector databases such as Milvus and Zilliz Cloud, allowing for more accurate, contextually relevant, and up-to-date response generation. A RAG pipeline usually consists of four basic components: a vector database, an embedding model, an LLM, and a framework.

Key Components We'll Use for This RAG Chatbot

This tutorial shows you how to build a simple RAG chatbot in Python using the following components:

LangChain: An open-source framework that helps you orchestrate the interaction between LLMs, vector stores, embedding models, etc, making it easier to integrate a RAG pipeline.
Milvus: An open-source vector database optimized to store, index, and search large-scale vector embeddings efficiently, perfect for use cases like RAG, semantic search, and recommender systems. If you hate to manage your own infrastructure, we recommend using Zilliz Cloud, which is a fully managed vector database service built on Milvus and offers a free tier supporting up to 1 million vectors.
Mistral AI Mistral Nemo: This model is designed for high-performance natural language processing, emphasizing interpretability and adaptability. It excels in tasks involving text generation, dialogue systems, and content creation. Ideal for industries like marketing and entertainment, Mistral Nemo delivers rich, coherent narratives while allowing for fine-tuning to specific domain requirements.
OpenAI text-embedding-ada-002: This model specializes in generating high-quality text embeddings, providing a powerful tool for various NLP applications. Its strengths lie in semantic search, clustering, and recommendation tasks. Ideal for developers needing efficient and scalable solutions for understanding and processing natural language data in diverse contexts.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have a functional chatbot capable of answering questions based on a custom knowledge base.

Note: Since we may use proprietary models in our tutorials, make sure you have the required API key beforehand.

Step 1: Install and Set Up LangChain

%pip install --quiet --upgrade langchain-text-splitters langchain-community langgraph

Step 2: Install and Set Up Mistral AI Mistral Nemo

pip install -qU "langchain[mistralai]"

import getpass
import os

if not os.environ.get("MISTRAL_API_KEY"):
  os.environ["MISTRAL_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter API key for Mistral AI: ")

from langchain.chat_models import init_chat_model

llm = init_chat_model("open-mistral-nemo", model_provider="mistralai")

Step 3: Install and Set Up OpenAI text-embedding-ada-002

pip install -qU langchain-openai

import getpass
import os

if not os.environ.get("OPENAI_API_KEY"):
  os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter API key for OpenAI: ")

from langchain_openai import OpenAIEmbeddings

embeddings = OpenAIEmbeddings(model="text-embedding-ada-002")

Step 4: Install and Set Up Milvus

pip install -qU langchain-milvus

from langchain_milvus import Milvus

vector_store = Milvus(embedding_function=embeddings)

Step 5: Build a RAG Chatbot

Now that you’ve set up all components, let’s start to build a simple chatbot. We’ll use the Milvus introduction doc as a private knowledge base. You can replace it with your own dataset to customize your RAG chatbot.

import bs4
from langchain import hub
from langchain_community.document_loaders import WebBaseLoader
from langchain_core.documents import Document
from langchain_text_splitters import RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter
from langgraph.graph import START, StateGraph
from typing_extensions import List, TypedDict

# Load and chunk contents of the blog
loader = WebBaseLoader(
    web_paths=("https://milvus.io/docs/overview.md",),
    bs_kwargs=dict(
        parse_only=bs4.SoupStrainer(
            class_=("doc-style doc-post-content")
        )
    ),
)

docs = loader.load()

text_splitter = RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter(chunk_size=1000, chunk_overlap=200)
all_splits = text_splitter.split_documents(docs)

# Index chunks
_ = vector_store.add_documents(documents=all_splits)

# Define prompt for question-answering
prompt = hub.pull("rlm/rag-prompt")


# Define state for application
class State(TypedDict):
    question: str
    context: List[Document]
    answer: str


# Define application steps
def retrieve(state: State):
    retrieved_docs = vector_store.similarity_search(state["question"])
    return {"context": retrieved_docs}


def generate(state: State):
    docs_content = "\n\n".join(doc.page_content for doc in state["context"])
    messages = prompt.invoke({"question": state["question"], "context": docs_content})
    response = llm.invoke(messages)
    return {"answer": response.content}


# Compile application and test
graph_builder = StateGraph(State).add_sequence([retrieve, generate])
graph_builder.add_edge(START, "retrieve")
graph = graph_builder.compile()

Test the Chatbot

Yeah! You've built your own chatbot. Let's ask the chatbot a question.

response = graph.invoke({"question": "What data types does Milvus support?"})
print(response["answer"])

Example Output

Milvus supports various data types including sparse vectors, binary vectors, JSON, and arrays. Additionally, it handles common numerical and character types, making it versatile for different data modeling needs. This allows users to manage unstructured or multi-modal data efficiently.

Optimization Tips

As you build your RAG system, optimization is key to ensuring peak performance and efficiency. While setting up the components is an essential first step, fine-tuning each one will help you create a solution that works even better and scales seamlessly. In this section, we’ll share some practical tips for optimizing all these components, giving you the edge to build smarter, faster, and more responsive RAG applications.

LangChain optimization tips

To optimize LangChain, focus on minimizing redundant operations in your workflow by structuring your chains and agents efficiently. Use caching to avoid repeated computations, speeding up your system, and experiment with modular design to ensure that components like models or databases can be easily swapped out. This will provide both flexibility and efficiency, allowing you to quickly scale your system without unnecessary delays or complications.

Milvus optimization tips

Milvus serves as a highly efficient vector database, critical for retrieval tasks in a RAG system. To optimize its performance, ensure that indexes are properly built to balance speed and accuracy; consider utilizing HNSW (Hierarchical Navigable Small World) for efficient nearest neighbor search where response time is crucial. Partitioning data based on usage patterns can enhance query performance and reduce load times, enabling better scalability. Regularly monitor and adjust cache settings based on query frequency to avoid latency during data retrieval. Employ batch processing for vector insertions, which can minimize database lock contention and enhance overall throughput. Additionally, fine-tune the model parameters by experimenting with the dimensionality of the vectors; higher dimensions can improve retrieval accuracy but may increase search time, necessitating a balance tailored to your specific use case and hardware infrastructure.

Mistral AI Mistral Nemo optimization tips

Mistral Nemo is designed for domain-specific knowledge retrieval and response generation, making retrieval efficiency a top priority. Optimize performance by fine-tuning retrieval pipelines to ensure domain-relevant embeddings are used for similarity searches. Use a ranking layer to prioritize the most contextually relevant passages before passing them to the model, reducing token waste. Adjust temperature settings (0.1–0.3) to maintain consistent, structured responses. In latency-sensitive applications, use token streaming to provide incremental responses rather than waiting for full completion. If running Nemo in a production environment, consider distributed inference techniques to manage large-scale workloads effectively. Monitor retrieval accuracy continuously and fine-tune embeddings periodically to keep responses aligned with domain-specific updates.

OpenAI text-embedding-ada-002 optimization tips

OpenAI text-embedding-ada-002 is widely used for its balance between performance and cost efficiency. Optimize retrieval by segmenting long documents into smaller, meaningful chunks before embedding, ensuring better contextual alignment with queries. Implement vector quantization to reduce memory footprint if handling large-scale embeddings. Use multi-stage retrieval, where an initial ANN search is followed by a more precise filtering or re-ranking step. Adjust index refresh frequency based on data update cycles to maintain relevance without excessive compute overhead. Leverage batching for embedding operations to minimize API latency. Consider fallback mechanisms, such as keyword-based retrieval, for edge cases where dense search alone may fail.

By implementing these tips across your components, you'll be able to enhance the performance and functionality of your RAG system, ensuring it’s optimized for both speed and accuracy. Keep testing, iterating, and refining your setup to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of AI development.

RAG Cost Calculator: A Free Tool to Calculate Your Cost in Seconds

Estimating the cost of a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline involves analyzing expenses across vector storage, compute resources, and API usage. Key cost drivers include vector database queries, embedding generation, and LLM inference.

RAG Cost Calculator is a free tool that quickly estimates the cost of building a RAG pipeline, including chunking, embedding, vector storage/search, and LLM generation. It also helps you identify cost-saving opportunities and achieve up to 10x cost reduction on vector databases with the serverless option.

Calculate your RAG cost now.

Calculate your RAG cost

What Have You Learned?

What an incredible journey we’ve just shared! By integrating LangChain, Milvus, Mistral AI, and the OpenAI text-embedding-ada-002 model, you now have the foundations of a cutting-edge RAG system at your fingertips. You’ve seen how the LangChain framework elegantly ties these powerful components together, ensuring smooth communication and functionality as your system connects the dots between gathering context and generating insightful responses.

The Milvus vector database, with its lightning-fast search capabilities, ensures that you can pull up relevant information in the blink of an eye, enabling your application to stay quick and responsive—perfect for keeping users engaged. Meanwhile, the Mistral AI’s advanced LLM fuels your system with an unprecedented level of conversational intelligence, allowing your application to interact naturally and meaningfully with users. Let’s not forget the OpenAI text-embedding-ada-002 model, which enhances your application’s understanding of nuances and context through richly generated semantic representations.

And how about those optimization tips and the free cost calculator? Those tools are here to help you refine your RAG applications, making them not only more efficient but also more cost-effective.

So, take this momentum with you! Dive into your own project, experiment boldly, and don’t hesitate to push the boundaries of what your RAG integrations can accomplish. The landscape is rich with opportunities to innovate—go out there and create something amazing! Your journey is just beginning, and I can’t wait to see what you’ll achieve!

Further Resources

🌟 In addition to this RAG tutorial, unleash your full potential with these incredible resources to level up your RAG skills.

How to Build a Multimodal RAG | Documentation
How to Enhance the Performance of Your RAG Pipeline
Graph RAG with Milvus | Documentation
How to Evaluate RAG Applications - Zilliz Learn
Generative AI Resource Hub | Zilliz

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