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Sketch Your First RAG on Paper

Relax. We'll talk through this in plain words — no textbook voice.

What you'll walk away with

  • Understand sketching your first RAG on paper without any of the scary mystique
  • Get hands-on practice trying it yourself
  • Learn to dodge hallucination and secret leaks with a smile

Sketch your RAG on paper before writing any code, and you'll see exactly where it can break. This lesson is the blueprint for Ask Your Notes.

Let's think about this for a second

A paper RAG doesn't have a UI yet. You're just drawing boxes for: the question comes in, which file to search, how many chunks to grab, what happens if nothing matches, and where the source shows up in the answer. Skip this step and the vector library, the API key, and the UI all get tangled together, making it painful to fix later. In vibe coding you write the spec first; in agent work you sketch the diagram first — same idea.

Let's connect it to everyday life

The Ask Your Notes diagram — user asks → search across 3 files → pick 2 chunks → read → grounded answer + source → stop. Failure path — if nothing is close enough, say "not found in notes." If the question is fishing for a secret, refuse. No web search. Keep it to no more than 6 boxes. If there's a magic box, split it into either "search" or "read."

Let's try it hands-on together

text
User question
   ↓
Search 3 local notes
   ↓
Keep 1–2 chunks
   ↓
Read them
   ↓
Answer + source   or   “မတွေ့”
   ↓
STOP
You should see
You'll be able to explain the blueprint for the Ask Your Notes RAG.

5-minute try-it

On paper, draw a diagram with no more than 6 boxes. Mark the not-found path in red.

One quick warning

If there's a box in your diagram you can't explain yet, you're not ready to write code for it.

Easy traps

  • Sketching the UI first without thinking through whether search will even work
  • Adding an "AI will just know" box into the diagram

Now try it yourself

On paper, draw a diagram with no more than 6 boxes. Mark the not-found path in red.

You'll know it worked when: You'll be able to explain the blueprint for the Ask Your Notes RAG.

Sketch Your First RAG on Paper | Thuta Learning