AI & Data Systems Artisan

From Local LLM to Local Agent: Tools, Prompts, and the Sharp Edges 🤖💻

Posted in May 2026 by Rares Vernica

An earlier post covered building a local LLM stack with Ollama, Open WebUI, and Continue. That stack was about getting something running — a chat box, a model in the IDE, a feel for what local inference looks like. This follow-up takes the next step: turning that stack into an... [Read More]

LangGraph is MIT-Licensed, but Your Production Deployment Might Not Be

Posted in March 2026 by Rares Vernica

LangChain has quietly built the most capable stack for production AI agents. Between the graph-based orchestration of LangGraph and the new DeepAgents harness, the developer experience is elite. But if you’re planning to self-host, there is a “licensing boundary” you need to know about before you commit to the architecture.... [Read More]

Elevate Your LLM Applications: A Deep Dive into Advanced RAG Techniques 🚀

Building Production-Ready Systems with Advanced Retrieval Strategies

Posted in December 2025 by Rares Vernica

Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) has revolutionized how Large Language Models (LLMs) access and utilize external knowledge, moving beyond static training data to deliver more accurate, relevant, and up-to-date responses. While basic RAG setups are powerful, achieving peak performance and addressing complex real-world scenarios often requires a more sophisticated approach. This... [Read More]

Deploying Your Local Open-Source LLM Stack 🤖💻

Building Your Personal AI Playground

Posted in July 2025 by Rares Vernica

In the rapidly evolving world of Large Language Models (LLMs), the ability to run these powerful tools locally on your hardware is likely appealing. Running AI locally grants you unparalleled control, endless customization, and complete data privacy. This guide will walk you through building your personal AI playground, assembling an... [Read More]

Dual-Engine Serverless SQL Lakehouse

Powerful lakehouse with DuckDB, Neon PostgreSQL, and Google Cloud Storage 🌊🦆🐘

Posted in June 2025 by Rares Vernica

The concept of a data lakehouse is gaining serious traction, and for good reason! It combines the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of a data lake with the data management features and ACID transactions of a data warehouse. Let’s dive into building a practical lakehouse setup using some fantastic open-source and cloud-native... [Read More]