The RAG Blueprint: Hands-On Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Lab

​Most AI tutorials teach you how to call an API.

​
They don’t teach you how to build systems that return reliable answers from your own data.

​This workshop is different.

​We’ll go beyond “chat with your docs” demos and build a production-grade Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system—one you can actually debug, evaluate, and improve.

​This is a hands-on, high-intensity session for developers and architects who want to understand how these systems really work.

​🛠 What You’ll Learn (and Build)

​We’ll break down RAG into the core components that actually matter:

• ​End-to-End Architecture
  From ingestion → chunking → retrieval → generation → evaluation

• ​Smart Chunking
  Why naive chunking fails—and how to structure data for better retrieval

• ​Advanced Retrieval Strategies
  Move beyond “top-k similarity” to get relevant, grounded answers

• ​Evaluation That Isn’t Guesswork
  How to measure answer quality instead of relying on vibes

• ​Observability & Debugging
  How to see where your pipeline breaks—and fix it

• ​Hands-On Implementation
  Build a working RAG pipeline step-by-step

​🎯 Who This Is For

• ​Frustrated Builders
  Your RAG app works… sometimes

• ​Engineers & Developers
  You know Python/JS and LLM basics, but want real systems thinking

• ​Solution Architects
  You need to evaluate trade-offs across vector DBs, embeddings, and retrieval

• ​Career Pivoters
  Move from prompt engineering → building full AI pipelines

​📦 What You’ll Walk Away With

• ​A working RAG boilerplate you can reuse

• ​A reference architecture you can explain and defend

• ​A mental model for debugging poor outputs

• ​A framework for improving answer quality and performance

​Bring your laptop.

​Let’s stop “chatting” with AI—and start building systems that actually work.

​

​“Toronto Tech Week is a citywide celebration of the people building what’s next. From May 25–29, 2026, founders, investors, and builders come together for hundreds of community-led events across Toronto, connecting tens of thousands of people around Canadian tech. Torontotechweek.com”

​