Building an Ideal Tech Stack for LLM Applications From Scratch

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Introduction

As AI and machine learning rapidly evolve, the process of creating applications powered by LLMs has become both more exciting and challenging.

In this blog post, we'll take you on a journey through the essential components and tools needed to build a robust tech stack for LLM applications from the ground up.

Whether you're starting from scratch or looking to refine your approach, this guide will provide you with the insights needed to make informed decisions and unlock the true potential of LLMs.

1. Data Ingestion and Integration

The first step in creating a robust LLM application is ensuring seamless data ingestion from various sources. Whether you're dealing with structured data from enterprise databases or unstructured data from knowledge bases, having the right tools is critical.

Data Connectors & ETL Tools:

Open Source:

Apache NiFi: Excellent for automating data flows, real-time data streaming, and handling complex ingestion tasks.
Airbyte: A powerful tool for extracting, loading, and transforming data from multiple APIs and databases.

Closed Source:

Fivetran: A managed service that simplifies data pipeline creation with minimal configuration.
Stitch: A cloud-based ETL service designed for simplicity and ease of use.

2. Data Storage and Management

Selecting the right data storage system is vital, especially when working with both structured and unstructured data.

Structured Data Storage:

Open Source:

PostgreSQL/MySQL: Reliable relational databases with extensive community support.

Closed Source:

Amazon RDS (PostgreSQL/MySQL): A scalable, managed solution with built-in reliability.

Unstructured Data Storage:

Open Source:

Elasticsearch: Ideal for indexing and searching large volumes of unstructured data.
MongoDB: A flexible NoSQL database, perfect for handling JSON-like data structures.

Closed Source:

Amazon OpenSearch: A managed version of Elasticsearch, offering the same powerful search capabilities.
Azure AI Search (formerly Cognitive Search): A managed service designed for sophisticated search applications.

3. Structured Data Extraction

Converting unstructured data into structured formats suitable for AI applications is a crucial step in the pipeline.

Tools for Structured Data Extraction:

Unstructured.io: A platform that transforms unstructured data into AI-ready structured formats.
Llamaparse: A versatile parsing tool from Llamaindex, supporting multiple file types and languages.
GPT-4: OpenAI's cutting-edge model for extracting structured data from complex formats.

4. Data Preprocessing and Cleaning

Before feeding data into your models, it must be preprocessed and cleaned. This ensures the data is in a usable state and improves model accuracy.

Data Processing Frameworks:

Open Source:

Apache Spark: Handles large-scale data processing for both batch and streaming data.
Pandas (Python): Excellent for manipulating and analyzing smaller datasets.

Closed Source:

Databricks: A cloud platform that builds on Apache Spark, offering advanced big data processing capabilities.

5. Open Source LLM Development Frameworks

Selecting the right framework to build your LLM application is critical. Here are some leading options:

Langchain: A popular framework providing standardized interfaces and components for LLM development.

Llamaindex: Facilitates the connection of custom data sources with LLMs, making it easier to develop RAG applications.

Haystack: An open-source framework for building production-ready LLM applications.

6. Vectorization and Embedding Models

Vectorization and embedding models play a vital role in transforming text into meaningful vector representations for NLP tasks.

Key Embedding Models:

OpenAI's ADA-002: Known for generating high-quality text embeddings, suitable for various NLP tasks.
Google's PaLM2 Gecko-001: Provides robust embeddings for deep semantic understanding.
Hugging Face Transformers: A versatile library for generating embeddings using pre-trained models like BERT and GPT.

7. Building the Retrieval System

A robust retrieval system is the backbone of any RAG application, enabling efficient information retrieval.

Vector Databases:

Open Source:

FAISS (Facebook AI Similarity Search): A tool for efficient similarity search and clustering of dense vectors.
Milvus: A scalable, high-performance vector database.

Closed Source:

Weaviate: A cloud-native vector search engine, perfect for AI applications requiring high-dimensional vector handling.
Qdrant: An open-source vector database optimized for high-performance similarity search.

8. Building the Generation System (LLMs)

The generation system is where the magic happens—creating meaningful text responses based on retrieved information.

LLM Fine-Tuning:

Open Source:

Hugging Face Transformers: Enables fine-tuning of pre-trained models on specific datasets.
Llama Factory: Provides a UI for enhanced and efficient model fine-tuning.

Closed Source:

Amazon SageMaker: A managed environment for fine-tuning and deploying LLMs.
Replicate: Supports the fine-tuning and deployment of custom models.
Open Pipe: Known for its high-speed model fine-tuning and deployment.

Model Deployment:

Open Source:

Hugging Face Inference API: Deploy custom or pre-trained models easily.
FastAPI or Flask: Serve machine learning models as APIs.

Closed Source:

Azure OpenAI Service: Deploy models like GPT-4 in a managed environment.
Google Vertex AI: A scalable platform for deploying large models.
Groq: Known for its high-speed AI inference technology.

9. Experimentation with AI Pipelines

Experimenting with different pipelines and model variations is crucial for optimizing performance.

Athina IDE: A collaborative platform that enables running and evaluating experiments rapidly, with a focus on both technical and non-technical users.

MLflow: A powerful open-source tool for managing the entire machine learning lifecycle, from experimentation to deployment.

10. Open-Source Evaluation Frameworks

Evaluating your LLM application is vital to ensure it meets the required standards and performs optimally.

RAGAS: Provides a suite of metrics for evaluating various aspects of RAG systems.

DeepEval: Facilitates unit testing of LLM outputs in Python, including regression testing and hyperparameter discovery.

Guardrails AI: Ensures your AI models operate within specified parameters through a comprehensive validation framework.

11. Monitoring and Evaluation Platforms

Monitoring and debugging your LLM application in production is critical for maintaining its performance and reliability.

Traceloop: An open-source monitoring platform built on OpenTelemetry, ideal for debugging complex AI applications.

Langsmith: Offers comprehensive monitoring, tracing, and debugging capabilities specifically for LLM applications.

Langfuse: Another open-source platform, providing detailed traces for monitoring complex LLM applications.

12. Deployment and Scaling

Finally, deploying and scaling your LLM application requires the right tools to ensure it can handle production workloads efficiently.

Containerization:

Docker: Containerize your application components for portability and ease of deployment.
Kubernetes: Orchestrate containerized applications for scalability and reliability.

CI/CD:

Open Source:

Jenkins: Automate your CI/CD pipeline for continuous integration and delivery.
GitLab CI: Integrated pipelines for seamless code management and deployment.

Closed Source:

GitHub Actions: Seamlessly integrates with GitHub repositories for automating workflows.
CircleCI: Provides scalable CI/CD pipelines with easy configuration.

Final Thoughts

A shoutout to our clients and ecosystem partners for their unbiased contributions to this resource.

This guide provides a flexible strategy, allowing you to begin with budget-friendly, community-supported tools and seamlessly scale up with managed services as your project evolves.

By carefully choosing the right mix of technologies, you can build an LLM application that is both powerful and scalable, perfectly suited to meet the demands of today's AI-driven landscape.

Is there something we missed? We'd love to hear from you! :)

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