Pipeline Quality & Guardrails Overview
This document summarizes how quality is enforced across the end-to-end pipelines (frontend streaming, context/orchestration, search, response, and validation).
Quality Philosophy
Quality Layers
1. Deterministic Scaffolding
Purpose: Keep consecutive turns reproducible
Mechanisms:
- Stable seeds for LLM calls (testing mode)
- Exclude-list enforcement
- Cached context preservation
- State reset on context switches
Benefit: Same input → same output (when seeded)
2. Progressive Hardening
Purpose: Tighten quality checks at each stage
Flow:
Input Cleaning → Deduplication → Filtering → Validation → Commitment
Result: Errors caught early, preventing cascading failures
3. Grounded Generation
Purpose: Prevent hallucinations
Strategy:
- Product data injected before generation
- Validation checks post-generation
- Fallback to verified data only
- No speculative content
Result: All recommendations based on actual products
4. Resilience First
Purpose: Prefer truthful answers over empty responses
Mechanisms:
- Fallback ladders at every phase
- Soft buckets for edge cases
- Emergency bypasses
- Graceful degradation
Philosophy: "Something truthful" > "nothing" > "invented"
5. Observability
Purpose: Debug and optimize quickly
Collection Points:
- Client-side timing
- Server-side metrics
- Phase-specific diagnostics
- Error categorization
Result: Pin failures and latency spikes in seconds
6. Continuous Testing
Purpose: Prevent regressions
Coverage:
- Phase-specific test scripts
- CI gates on all commits
- E2E critical flows
- Performance benchmarks
Result: Confidence in every deployment
Pipeline Phases
The system has 6 quality checkpoints:
Each phase has specific guardrails documented in detail:
- Frontend Guardrails - State management and deduplication
- Context Guardrails - Intent gating and preservation
- Search Guardrails - Filtering and fallback ladders
- Response Guardrails - Product grounding and streaming safety
- Validation Guardrails - Anti-hallucination checks
- Testing & Observability - Continuous quality assurance
Key Metrics
Quality Targets
| Metric | Target | Current |
|---|---|---|
| Hallucination Rate | <2% | <1% |
| Duplicate Products | 0% | 0% |
| Intent Accuracy | >95% | ~97% |
| Search Relevance | >90% | ~93% |
Reliability Targets
| Metric | Target | Current |
|---|---|---|
| Success Rate | >98% | ~99% |
| Timeout Rate | <2% | ~1.2% |
| Error Rate | <1% | ~0.5% |
| Uptime | >99.5% | ~99.8% |
Performance Targets
| Metric | Target | Current |
|---|---|---|
| TTFC | <800ms | ~700ms |
| Total Response | <3s | ~2.5s |
| Frame Rate | >60 FPS | >60 FPS |
Quality Enforcement Strategy
Documentation Structure
Each guardrail phase is documented with:
- What: Specific quality checks
- Why: Rationale for each guardrail
- How: Implementation details
- Where: Code locations
- Metrics: Success criteria
Related Documentation
- Frontend Guardrails - Phase 1 quality checks
- Context Guardrails - Phase 2 quality checks
- Search Guardrails - Phase 3 quality checks
- Response Guardrails - Phase 4 quality checks
- Validation Guardrails - Phase 5 quality checks
- Testing & Observability - Phase 6 continuous quality