Today's Deep-Dive: Agentset
Ep. 279

Today's Deep-Dive: Agentset

Episode description

The episode discusses Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and introduces Agentset as a platform designed to simplify building reliable and traceable AI agents. It addresses the common problem of AI hallucination, where language models invent facts, which is a significant barrier when agents need to access specific or internal knowledge. Agentset aims to solve this by making RAG more accessible, even for beginners, by handling complex engineering tasks like data ingestion, chunking, and retrieval. The platform supports over 22 file formats for ingestion and uses a built-in chunking strategy to prepare documents for retrieval. Key features for accuracy include hybrid search, which combines vector search with keyword search, and re-ranking to ensure the most relevant information is provided to the AI. Agentset also offers deep research capabilities for more in-depth answers and provides automatic citations, allowing users to verify the source of information. Metadata filtering allows for limiting AI responses to specific data subsets, ensuring compliance and relevance. The platform emphasizes developer experience with SDKs and APIs, and importantly, is model-agnostic, allowing users to choose their preferred AI models, vector databases, and embedding models. For integration, it offers standard SDKs and a Model Context Protocol Server. Security is a priority, with end-to-end encryption and options for EU data residency and on-premise deployment for maximum control. Agentset offers both a cloud version with a free tier for easy experimentation and an open-source option for self-hosting, providing a choice between speed to market and complete control. The core takeaway is that Agentset simplifies the complex infrastructure of RAG, enabling the creation of trustworthy AI applications by bypassing engineering headaches and focusing on reliability and traceability.

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Download transcript (.srt)
0:00

Okay, let's unpack this. If you're working with AI agents, you've probably run

0:04

smack into the trust

0:05

barrier. We're talking about that fundamental problem with large language models,

0:09

the dreaded

0:10

hallucination where the AI just invents stuff. Yeah, invents facts. And it's more

0:16

than just

0:17

annoying, right? It's a huge challenge if your agent needs to know about your

0:20

specific,

0:21

maybe internal knowledge. Exactly. So today we're doing a deep dive into the tech

0:26

built to fix

0:27

this trust crisis, Retrieval Augmented Generation, RAGRI, for short. Ah. But before

0:33

we really get

0:33

into the weeds of grounding these agents, we really want to thank SafeServer. Ah,

0:37

yes. They

0:38

focus on hosting exactly this kind of complex, cutting edge software. They're all

0:43

about supporting

0:43

your digital transformation journey, making sure you've got the right setup for

0:46

advanced RAG apps.

0:47

You can find out more about how they help with hosting over at www.safeserver.de.

0:52

So, our mission today, to give you a crucial shortcut, we're going to demystify

0:57

this platform

0:57

called AgentSet. It's designed so pretty much anyone can build these really

1:01

reliable, traceable

1:02

frontier RAG apps. We'll break down how it works so even if you're totally new to

1:08

RAG,

1:08

you'll get why it promises to skip all that painful, expensive trial and error you

1:12

often see.

1:12

And that's key, focusing on beginners too. Because RAG, well, fundamentally it's

1:16

about giving the AI

1:17

proof. You ground the agent in a specific knowledge base so it stops being a

1:21

general know-it-all and

1:22

becomes an expert on your stuff, your documents. We're looking at a system designed

1:26

to make that

1:27

really complex engineering job more plug-and-play. Right, reliable answers right

1:32

out of the box.

1:33

So let's start right there with that fundamental difference. The promise is

1:37

building reliable AI

1:38

agents fast, cutting down hallucinations and, you know, impressing people from the

1:43

get-go.

1:44

Yeah, and it's interesting to think about the pain point Agentset is trying to

1:47

solve here. If you,

1:48

the listener, tried the DIY route, maybe using tools like Langchain or Lamma Index,

1:53

the source material suggests you hit a wall pretty fast, a steep learning curve,

1:57

complex setup,

1:58

loads of boilerplate code, and maybe worst of all, the retrieval quality. It's just

2:02

all over the place. Inconsistent.

2:05

Let's pause on that inconsistency. What does that complexity actually mean for an

2:09

engineer?

2:10

It's not just like calling one API, is it?

2:12

Oh, absolutely not. No. The trouble starts immediately with getting the documents

2:15

in and

2:16

shopping them up. Ingestion and chunking. When you build our Ag yourself, you have

2:20

to figure out,

2:20

okay, how do I break this huge document into pieces? Small enough for the LLM,

2:25

but big enough to keep the meaning. Right.

2:27

Do I use paragraphs, fixed number of words, some recursive method? You choose wrong,

2:33

and the whole retrieval thing can just fail. It's a huge decision that,

2:37

if you're doing it yourself, needs tons of tuning and testing.

2:40

An agent set comes in and basically says, look, we've got a ready-to-use engine.

2:44

It handles that complexity, those architectural choices,

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right away. And it starts with ingestion. Exactly. Your documents, your knowledge,

2:51

get automatically parsed. And from over 22 file formats.

2:54

That's a lot. It is. And it's important because it's not

2:57

just the easy ones like PDF and Word docs. It includes tricky ones like

3:01

EML emails, CSVs, even image files like BMP and complex XMLs. That breadth alone

3:08

solves a huge integration headache for developers dealing with messy corporate

3:12

data silos. Okay, so the documents are in. How does

3:15

the system prep them for retrieval? The platform uses its own built-in chunking

3:20

strategy. It automatically breaks everything down

3:22

into these manageable searchable bits trying to maximize the context.

3:26

Then they get embedded, turned into numbers basically, vectors and stored in

3:30

a vector database. This makes finding them later really fast

3:34

using math, that whole ingestion and prep stage. That's

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where a lot of DIY rag projects stumble because of bad choices early on.

3:41

AgentSet aims to make those good choices for you. Okay, let's move to section two

3:45

then, the core function. How does AgentSet actually guarantee

3:48

accuracy and fight off those hallucinations?

3:50

This is really key if you need dependable enterprise-grade answers.

3:54

Right. They aim for reliable accuracy by using what the sources call

3:59

best-in-class R-RAID techniques right from the start.

4:02

They've essentially optimized the retrieval bit before you even think

4:05

about customizing anything. Two features really jumped out at me

4:08

from the material, hybrid search and re-ranking.

4:12

Let's unpack why these are like safety nets against bad answers.

4:16

Okay, hybrid search is kind of the proactive step. See,

4:19

basic vector search is good at finding stuff that's semantically similar chunks

4:23

talking about the same topic. Getting similar, yeah.

4:25

But similar meaning doesn't always mean it's the right context for the specific

4:29

question. Hybrid search casts a wider net. It

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combines that vector search with good old keyword and full text search.

4:36

This finds more potentially relevant bits of information,

4:40

making sure something isn't missed just because the vector math was slightly off.

4:44

And then re-ranking. That's the quality control, right?

4:47

Hybrid search finds maybe a thousand relevant looking chunks.

4:50

How does the system pick the best three to actually show the LLM?

4:54

Precisely. Re-ranking is like the final editor.

4:58

It takes all those candidates from the hybrid search and sorts them based on true

5:02

relevance and

5:03

quality. It ensures the absolute best, most contextually spot-on material gets

5:08

passed to

5:09

the large language model. That's how you get the highest accuracy by cleaning up

5:13

the retrieved

5:13

information before the LLM even sees it. That's a critical distinction. The AI isn't

5:18

just grabbing nearby stuff. It's prioritizing the quality of the evidence.

5:22

Exactly. And they add another layer, too. Built-in support for deep research.

5:27

You can choose quick answer or a deeper dive. Deep research takes longer, naturally,

5:32

but it looks at way more sources and gives back really in-depth answers with more

5:36

context.

5:38

Great for complex questions or high stakes decisions.

5:40

That may be the most vital feature for building trust with the person asking the

5:43

question.

5:44

Citations.

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Absolutely non-negotiable, usually. The system automatically cites the exact

5:50

sources for its

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answers. This lets you, the user, click through and see the original document, the

5:55

page, even

5:56

the paragraph where the AI got its info. In a business setting, that traceability

6:00

is essential

6:01

for compliance, for validation.

6:03

And building on that control idea, there's metadata filtering.

6:06

Give us a quick, practical example of why that matters.

6:09

Sure. So this lets you limit the AI's answers to only a specific slice of your data

6:14

based on

6:15

tags you added when you uploaded the documents. Imagine a big company. You might

6:19

need an agent

6:20

that only answers using documents tagged Legal 2023 Q4 to make sure it's compliant,

6:26

maybe excluding

6:27

marketing stuff entirely. It keeps the agent operating within very specific

6:30

boundaries. Again,

6:32

making sure the answers are traceable and vetted from your chosen sources.

6:35

Okay. That level of reliability, that optimized architecture, that usually takes a

6:39

dedicated

6:39

expense of engineering team. But agents had to talk about production in hours. So

6:44

let's

6:44

shift to developer experience and flexibility section three.

6:47

Right. If we pivot from accuracy to just making it easy to implement, what's really

6:53

important for

6:53

scaling is how accessible they've made deployment. They offer ready to go SDKs for

6:58

JavaScript and

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Python, clean APIs, typed SDKs too. This means developers can upload data and plug

7:05

it into

7:05

existing systems fast without wrestling with, you know, messy or undocumented code.

7:11

Okay. But let's be a bit skeptical. If agent set is prepackaging all these fancy

7:15

rogue techniques, what's the catch? Am I locked into their way of doing things?

7:20

Their cloud,

7:21

their choice of AI model. Excellent question. And the source material really

7:25

stresses this.

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Agent set is extremely model agnostic. You are specifically not locked into one

7:30

vendor's AI.

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That's a huge strategic plus. You keep control, you pick your own vector database,

7:36

your own embedding model, and critically your own large language model.

7:39

And that's not just a tech detail, is it? That's about cost, it's about strategy.

7:43

Absolutely. It lets you fine tune performance and manage your budget.

7:46

Maybe you use a powerful pricey model like GPT-4 for that deep research feature.

7:50

Or maybe a cheaper, faster model from Anthropic or Cohere for everyday customer

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questions.

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Agent set works with all the big players. Open AI, Anthropic, Google AI,

8:00

Cohere. You keep control of your underlying tech stack, avoid getting locked in.

8:04

That makes a lot of sense. Now once I've got agent set running,

8:08

how do I actually connect that knowledge base to other applications?

8:11

So for bringing that knowledge out, they offer a couple of ways.

8:14

One is just easy integration using their standard AI SDK. Pretty straightforward.

8:19

But for connecting that powerful, grounded knowledge base to external apps or maybe

8:24

microservices, they have something called the Model Context Protocol Server or MCP

8:28

server.

8:28

Okay. What does the MCP server do exactly?

8:31

Think of it like a secure gateway, a dedicated one.

8:34

It lets your other applications query the agent set knowledge base,

8:38

that whole sophisticated RRAG engine, without needing to rebuild the retrieval and

8:42

LLM logic

8:42

themselves. It essentially serves up the contextual proof, ready for any external

8:47

app to use to generate a reliable answer. And to help developers get going faster,

8:51

they even threw in a chat playground. Yes. With message editing and citations built

8:56

right in, it's brilliant for just quickly trying things out, prototyping.

9:00

Developers can immediately see if the RIG is working well, check the accuracy of

9:04

answers,

9:04

without having to push anything live, it cuts down testing time dramatically.

9:08

Okay, let's move to section four. This is huge. Security and control. Especially

9:14

when we're talking

9:14

about grounding AI in sensitive proprietary company data. What protections are

9:19

baked in?

9:20

How do they build that trust? Security seems to be multilayered,

9:23

often aiming higher than standard practice. Your data is secured with end-to-end

9:27

encryption using

9:28

bank-grade AES-256. And all the data moving around is secured using TLS. Standard,

9:34

but essential.

9:35

But the real decider for many companies is control. Who actually owns the data?

9:38

Who controls the infrastructure? Where does it live?

9:41

Absolutely. And the key differentiator here seems to be flexibility and hosting

9:45

control.

9:46

The platform lets users host your data on top of your own vector database,

9:50

your own storage bucket, and your own chosen AI models. For sensitive systems,

9:54

keeping ownership and control over that data stack is paramount.

9:57

And what about organizations with really strict rules,

10:00

especially around where data can physically be? Data residency requirements?

10:04

Yep. For compliance needs, Agentset offers specific options for EU data residency.

10:10

That means ensuring data is processed only on servers within the EU,

10:13

which ticks a big box for GDPR and similar regulations.

10:17

And for the absolute maximum control, maybe for finance or healthcare,

10:21

they support on-premise deployment.

10:23

So on-prem means putting the whole Agentset system behind your own company firewall,

10:28

in your own cloud.

10:28

That's exactly it. It lets you deploy Agentset inside your existing cloud

10:33

environment,

10:33

AWS, Azure, GCP, whatever, but completely under your security rules behind your

10:39

firewalls.

10:40

That's the ultimate level of control for really critical applications.

10:43

So it sounds like if you're looking to adopt this,

10:45

there are two pretty clear paths depending on your needs.

10:48

Yeah, basically. First, there's Agentset Cloud. That's the quickest way to get

10:52

started,

10:52

kick the tires. Crucially, they have a generous free tier, 1,000 pages of documents

10:57

you can ingest,

10:58

10,000 retrievals. Makes it really easy to experiment without commitment.

11:02

And then, for those who need that total control, you can self-host.

11:06

Right. Because Agentset is open source MIT license, which is very permissive. You

11:11

can

11:11

just download the whole thing and run it yourself. That gives you absolute maximum

11:15

technical control

11:16

over the entire RAG setup, the knowledge, the infrastructure. It's really a choice

11:21

between

11:22

getting to market fast versus having complete uncompromised control.

11:25

So, to kind of wrap up the key takeaway for you, the listener, Agentset takes the

11:31

really painful

11:32

complex bits of RAG getting diverse data in, figuring out chunking, doing advanced

11:36

retrieval

11:36

like hybrid search, adding citations and packages at all into an accessible engine

11:41

that's accurate

11:41

out of the box. It essentially lets you skip building that whole complex

11:45

infrastructure from

11:46

scratch. You bypass the RAG engineering headaches and can focus straight away on

11:50

building a reliable

11:51

AI app you can actually trust. And here's where it gets really interesting for me,

11:54

the final thought. Given how easy they're making deployment, the model flexibility,

11:59

these powerful accuracy features like hybrid search and deep research, how quickly

12:03

will these

12:04

traceable knowledge-backed AI agents just become the standard? Will they totally

12:08

replace the simpler,

12:10

less reliable chat bots that, you know, can't actually prove where they got their

12:13

answers from

12:14

using your specific documents? It feels like the demand for trust is making traceability

12:19

basically mandatory. A huge thank you once again to SafeServer for supporting this

12:23

deep dive and

12:24

enabling digital transformation. If you want to explore hosting solutions for this

12:28

kind of

12:28

advanced software, please do visit www.safeserver.de. And thank you for joining us

12:34

Go forth and ground your agents.

12:34

Go forth and ground your agents.