Is production-scale RAG just duct tape over duct tape?

[onestardao]

Not here to rant, but yeah... kind of here to rant.

Every time I try to scale a RAG pipeline beyond a toy app, it just... cracks.

• Chunks are syntactically clean, but semantically weird.
• Context injection often feels helpful but ends up just confusing the model more.
• Latency stacks up like unpaid tech debt. You need 3 systems just to make 1 sentence land.

And even when everything works, it only works if you constantly monitor it like a toddler.

I'm not even against RAG — in fact, I want it to work.
But it feels like we're using LLMs as brains... then force-feeding them Wikipedia through a straw.

Is this a design mismatch?
Or are we just not doing it right?

I'm super curious what pain others have run into — especially anyone trying to make Haystack setups feel smooth, not just "technically working".

No pitch, no links, no hidden agenda.
Just tired fingers and context confusion.