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Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is a cutting-edge technique in artificial intelligence (AI) that enhances the capabilities of generative models by integrating retrieval mechanisms. In the context of AI data platforms, RAG is particularly significant. These platforms often need to process and generate insights from extensive and diverse datasets. By leveraging RAG, AI systems can retrieve pertinent information from their vast data repositories and generate responses or insights that are not only contextually appropriate but also grounded in the most relevant and up-to-date data available. This enhances the accuracy, reliability, and utility of the AI’s outputs, making RAG an invaluable component in the development and deployment of advanced AI applications on data platforms. In this blog post we will build a RAG pipeline for chatbot which gives info about SpaceX launches by using Peaka, a zero-ETL data platform which integrates all your data sources and allows you to query them as single data source immediately. We will add Pinecone and SpaceX API as connections to Peaka and leverage Peaka’s Node Client to query data for the RAG pipeline.

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TL;DR

If you want to skip the implementation details, check out the finished code on Github. Follow the instructions on Readme to run the project on your local machine. If you want to try the demo for yourself, visit Vercel to try the demo

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Prerequisites

You will need the following accounts for this project:

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Tech Stack

TechnologyDescription
https://www.peaka.com/A zero-ETL data integration platform with single-step context generation capability
https://www.pinecone.io/The serverless vector database which will be used for storing vector embeddings.
https://openai.com/An artificial intelligence research lab focused on developing advanced AI technologies.
https://vercel.com/templates/aiLibrary for building AI-powered streaming text and chat UIs.
https://docs.nlkit.com/nlux/NLUX is an open-source JavaScript library for creating elegant and performant conversational user interfaces.
https://nextjs.org/The React Framework for the Web. Nextjs will be used for building the chatbot app.

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Create Peaka Project and API Key

Once you login to Peaka, you need to create your project and connect sample data sets. Check out Peaka Documentation on how to create a project for detailed instructions. Enter your created project and click Connect sample data sets button on the screen as shown in the image below: connect_sample_data.png In the sample data set both Peaka Rest Table for SpaceX API and Pinecone data sources are already added. We will use these data sources for our demo app. After you create your project, setup connections, and create your catalogs in Peaka, you need to generate a Peaka API Key to use it with our project. Check out Peaka Documentation on how to create API Keys for detailed instructions. Copy and save your Peaka API Key.

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Create a Next.js Application

To create a new project, first navigate to the directory that you want to create your project in using your terminal. Then, run the following commands: 
npm install -g create-next-app
npx create-next-app@latest
  • Use Tailwind CSS (for UI design)
  • Use “App Router”
After this step, go to your project’s folder with the cd command and install the necessary libraries 
  npm i @ai-sdk/openai @ai-sdk/react @nlux/react @nlux/themes @peaka/client @upstash/vector ai langchain lodash zod
From now on, when you are at the directory of your project the command npm run dev is going to be sufficient to run the project on localhost:3000. If you need further clarification, you can refer to the Readme or the Next.js documentation

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Create .env file

Now create a file called .env in your project and add it to the .gitignore file if you are considering to add this project to your Github account. In this file, we will store our API keys. You need to create a Pinecone project and API Key. After creating your Pinecone project then create an index with dimension 1536 and metric cosine. Then use the name of the index in the environment variable. Finally, you need to create an OpenAI API Key. After completing necessary actions copy these values to environment variables accordingly. 
PEAKA_API_KEY=<YOUR_PEAKA_API_KEY>
OPENAI_API_KEY=<YOUR_OPEN_API_KEY>
PINECONE_API_KEY=<YOUR_PINECONE_API_KEY>
PINECONE_INDEX=<YOUR_PINECONE_INDEX>

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Create Peaka Service

Create a service folder under the root folder in your project and create a peaka.service.ts file inside this folder. We will need to implement two methods in this service class. The first method is getAllSpacexLaunches, which will fetch all the launches from SpaceX API. The SQL query is trivial like below: 
SELECT id, name, links_article FROM "spacex"."public"."launches"
Then we need to implement vectorSearch method, which will query both Pinecone index and will join the results with SpaceX API results to get all of the metadata of the launches. The query will be like this: 
 WITH vector_query AS (
  SELECT CAST(JSON_EXTRACT(metadata, '$.id') AS VARCHAR) AS launch_id,  CAST(JSON_EXTRACT(metadata, '$.text') AS VARCHAR) AS article_content FROM "pinecone"."main"."spacex-launches"
    WHERE  _q_search= 'query_vector(vector=[<%= vectors %>]; topK=<%= topK %>;)'
   )

  SELECT * FROM "vector_query" AS vq, "spacex"."public"."launches" AS l WHERE l.id = vq.launch_id
Finally, peaka.service.ts will look like this: 
export class PeakaService {
  private connection: Peaka;

  private constructor() {
    this.connection = connectToPeaka(process.env.PEAKA_API_KEY ?? "");
  }

  static #instance: PeakaService;

  public static get instance(): PeakaService {
    if (!PeakaService.#instance) {
      PeakaService.#instance = new PeakaService();
    }

    return PeakaService.#instance;
  }

  public async getAllSpacexLaunches(): Promise<SpacexLaunchInfo[]> {
    const iter = await this.connection.query(
      'SELECT id, name, links_article FROM "spacex"."public"."launches"'
    );

    const launches: SpacexLaunchInfo[] = [];
    const data: QueryData[] = await iter
      .map((r) => r.data ?? [])
      .fold<QueryData[]>([], (row, acc) => [...acc, ...row]);

    for (const queryData of data) {
      const launch: SpacexLaunchInfo = {
        id: queryData[0],
        name: queryData[1],
        links_article: queryData[2],
      };

      launches.push(launch);
    }

    return launches;
  }

  public async vectorSearch(
    vectors: number[],
    topK: number
  ): Promise<QueryData[]> {
    const iter = await this.connection.query(
      VECTOR_LAUNCHES_VECTOR_SEARCH_SQL_TEMPLATE({ vectors, topK })
    );

    const data: QueryData[] = await iter
      .map((r) => r.data ?? [])
      .fold<QueryData[]>([], (row, acc) => [...acc, ...row]);

    return data;
  }
}

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Create populate data endpoint

We will implement a get endpoint which will populate vector database when called. First, we will create route.ts under app/api/populate-data folder. We will follow below steps:
  1. Delete all the data in the index
  2. Fetch all SpaceX launches from Peaka Rest which will have article urls about SpaceX launches
  3. For all article urls fetch all the content with RecursiveUrlLoader of the langhchain library
  4. Split all of the articles into chunks
  5. Write all the chunks to Pinecone index with the metada
The final code will be like this: 
export const dynamic = "force-dynamic";
import { PeakaService } from "@/service/peaka.service";
import { Pinecone } from "@pinecone-database/pinecone";
import { NextResponse } from "next/server";
import { RecursiveUrlLoader } from "@langchain/community/document_loaders/web/recursive_url";
import { compile } from "html-to-text";
import { PineconeStore } from "@langchain/pinecone";
import { Document } from "@langchain/core/documents";
import { OpenAIEmbeddings } from "@langchain/openai";
import { RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter } from "langchain/text_splitter";

export async function GET() {
  const pc = new Pinecone({
    apiKey: process.env.PINECONE_API_KEY!,
  });

  const pineconeIndex = pc.index(process.env.PINECONE_INDEX!);

  try {
    await pineconeIndex.deleteAll();
  } catch (e) {
    console.log("Could not delete index");
  }

  const peakaService = PeakaService.instance;

  const launches = await peakaService.getAllSpacexLaunches();

  const compiledConvert = compile({ wordwrap: 130 }); // returns (text: string) => string;
  const splitter = new RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter({});

  const docs: Document[] = [];
  for (const launch of launches) {
    const url = launch.links_article;

    if (url) {
      const loader = new RecursiveUrlLoader(url, {
        extractor: compiledConvert,
        maxDepth: 0,
      });

      const urlDocs = await loader.load();
      if (urlDocs.length === 0) continue;

      const output = await splitter.createDocuments([urlDocs[0].pageContent]);

      for (const text of output) {
        docs.push(
          new Document({
            metadata: {
              id: launch.id,
              name: launch.name,
              link: launch.links_article,
            },
            pageContent: text.pageContent,
          })
        );
      }
    }
  }

  await PineconeStore.fromDocuments(docs, new OpenAIEmbeddings(), {
    pineconeIndex,
    maxConcurrency: 5,
  });

  return NextResponse.json({ success: true });
}

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Create Chat Prompts

Create a folder config in the root directory of the project and create a config.ts under this folder. We will define our system prompt and OpenAI parameters for our chatbot in here with lodash templates and export them like below: 
export const SPACEX_CHATBOT_INSTRUCTION =
  _.template(` You are a helpful chatbot which answers questions about given context. Context information is below.
---------------------
<%= context %>
---------------------
Given the context information and not prior knowledge, answer the query.
Query: <%= query %>
Answer: 
`);

export const SPACEX_CHATBOT_PARAMS = {
  temperature: 0,
  modelName: "gpt-4o",
  max_tokens: 2000,
};
Notice that in SPACEX_CHATBOT_INSTRUCTION template we will feed the LLM with Pinecone results as context and user query and we will expect the LLM to answer with the given contex.

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Implement Chatbot API

In the chatbot, we should first create a POST endpoint. The input of this endpoint should be the message of the user and output should be the message generated by LLM running on OpenAI. First, we will create route.ts under app/api/chat. This file will have the POST endpoint with /api/chat extension in the url. We will use ai-sdk of Vercel for response streaming and use langchain open library to interact with LLM. The code is straight forward with an algorithm is like this:
  • Get the prompt from request body
  • Get the OpenAI Embeddings of the user query with langchain
  • Query Pinecone Store with Peaka Client
  • Finally, feed the result to the LLM and stream the response of LLM to frontend
Implementation of api/chat route should like this: 
export const dynamic = "force-dynamic";
import { SPACEX_CHATBOT_INSTRUCTION } from "@/config/config";
import { PeakaService } from "@/service/peaka.service";
import { openai } from "@ai-sdk/openai";
import { OpenAIEmbeddings } from "@langchain/openai";
import { streamText } from "ai";

export async function POST(req: Request) {
  const request = await req.json();

  if (!request.prompt) return new Response("Missing query", { status: 400 });

  const prompt = request.prompt;
  const peakaService = PeakaService.instance;
  const embeddings = new OpenAIEmbeddings();
  const vectors = await embeddings.embedQuery(request.prompt);

  const launches = await peakaService.vectorSearch(vectors, 10);

  const result = await streamText({
    model: openai("gpt-4o"),
    messages: [
      {
        role: "system",
        content: SPACEX_CHATBOT_INSTRUCTION({
          context: JSON.stringify(launches),
          query: prompt,
        }),
      },
    ],
  });

  return result.toTextStreamResponse();
}

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Implement Chatbot UI

We have the POST endpoint ready. Now we need the UI for our chatbot. For the UI, we will use NLUX. We choose NLUX because it provides easy integration with Vercel AI SDK. Let’s open pages.tsx file to build our chat window. The following code will implement a very basic chatbot UI for this demo. We will use AiChat component from NLUX and need to implement ChatAdapter interface in order to communicate with the backend. Then, we provide conversationOptions to our AiChat component which will built-in chat prompt for demo purposes. 
"use client";
import "@nlux/themes/nova.css";
import {
  AiChat,
  AiChatUI,
  ChatAdapter,
  StreamingAdapterObserver,
} from "@nlux/react";

export default function Chat() {
  const chatAdapter: ChatAdapter = {
    streamText: async (prompt: string, observer: StreamingAdapterObserver) => {
      const response = await fetch("/api/chat", {
        method: "POST",
        body: JSON.stringify({ prompt: prompt }),
        headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
      });
      if (response.status !== 200) {
        observer.error(new Error("Failed to connect to the server"));
        return;
      }

      if (!response.body) {
        return;
      }

      // Read a stream of server-sent events
      // and feed them to the observer as they are being generated
      const reader = response.body.getReader();
      const textDecoder = new TextDecoder();

      while (true) {
        const { value, done } = await reader.read();
        if (done) {
          break;
        }

        const content = textDecoder.decode(value);
        if (content) {
          observer.next(content);
        }
      }

      observer.complete();
    },
  };

  return (
    <main className="flex min-h-screen flex-col items-center justify-between p-24">
      <div className="z-10 w-full max-w-3xl items-center justify-between font-mono text-sm lg:flex">
        <AiChat
          adapter={chatAdapter}
          displayOptions={{
            colorScheme: "dark",
            height: 1200,
          }}
          personaOptions={{
            assistant: {
              name: "Peaka Bot",
              avatar:
                "https://docs.nlkit.com/nlux/images/personas/harry-botter.png",
              tagline: "Making Magic With Peaka",
            },
          }}
          conversationOptions={{
            layout: "bubbles",
            conversationStarters: [
              {
                label: "Crew Dragon's Launches",
                prompt: "Give me information about Crew Dragon's launches.",
              },
              {
                label: "Turksat 5A Launch",
                prompt:
                  "Give me information about Turksat 5A launch done by SpaceX",
              },
              {
                label: "Most Expensive Crash",
                prompt:
                  "What is the most expensive rocket launch crash or accidents during Spacex Flights?",
              },
            ],
          }}
        >
          <AiChatUI.Greeting>
            <span className="rounded">
              <div className="flex flex-col justify-center items-center gap-5">
                <div>Hello! 👋</div>
                <div className="text-pretty w-2/3 text-center">
                  This is a rag pipeline is implemented with Peaka. The data is
                  fetched from SpaceX public API&apos;s by using Peaka&apos;s
                  Rest Table and uses Peaka&apos;s Pinecone connector to search
                  for information in vector database using sql. Then the results
                  are sent to OpenAI to generate the response.
                </div>

                <div className="text-pretty w-2/3 text-center">
                  Try by clicking sample prompts or get to the full code from{" "}
                  <a
                    href="https://github.com/peakacom/rag-example-with-api"
                    target="_blank"
                    className="underline"
                  >
                    Github
                  </a>
                </div>
              </div>
            </span>
          </AiChatUI.Greeting>
        </AiChat>
      </div>
    </main>
  );
}
After we finish our implementation, the UI should look like this: finished_ui_1.png Let’s try one of our sample prompts and see what our bot will tell us about Turksat 5A launch: finished_ui_2.png As you can see, our chatbot gave detailed information about Turksat 5A launch by combining SpaceX API data from Peaka Rest Connector and Pinecone vector index with Peaka’s query engine. By the help of Peaka, we were able to query both data sources with single API call.

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Conclusion

In this tutorial, we’ve demonstrated how you can build a RAG pipeline using Peaka and Pinecone. Using Peaka’s advanced query engine, our chatbot seamlessly combined SpaceX API data from Peaka Rest Connector and Pinecone vector index, delivering detailed information about the Turksat 5A launch—all with a single API call. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to me on GitHub.