Context Engineering Pipeline for Research Assistant

A comprehensive research assistant that combines multiple AI agents using CrewAI Flows to provide intelligent, multi-source responses to research queries.

Architecture Overview

This research assistant uses a multi-agent CrewAI Flow architecture with the following components:

Core Components

1. Document Processing & RAG Pipeline

   • TensorLake for complex document parsing with structured extraction
   • Voyage Context 3 embeddings for contextualized semantic understanding
   • Milvus vector database for efficient similarity search
   • OpenAI GPT models with structured output formatting

2. Memory Layer

   • Zep Cloud for persistent conversation memory
   • User preference tracking
   • Conversation summarization and context retrieval

3. Web Search Integration

   • Firecrawl for real-time web search capabilities
   • Retrieval of recent information not available in documents

4. Multi-Agent Flow Architecture

   • RAG Agent: Searches through parsed research documents
   • Memory Agent: Retrieves conversation history and user preferences
   • Web Search Agent: Finds recent web-based information
   • Tool Calling Agent: Interfaces with external APIs (extensible)
   • Evaluator Agent: Filters and ranks context relevance
   • Synthesizer Agent: Creates coherent final responses

Flow Process

graph TD
    A["User Query"] --> B["ResearchAssistantFlow<br/>Entry Point"]
    B --> C["Parallel Agent Execution"]
    
    C --> D["RAG Agent<br/>📚 Document Search"]
    C --> E["Memory Agent<br/>🧠 Context Retrieval"]
    C --> F["Web Search Agent<br/>🌐 Real-time Info"]
    C --> G["Tool Calling Agent<br/>🔧 External APIs"]
    
    D --> H["Context Collection<br/>📊 Aggregate Results"]
    E --> H
    F --> H
    G --> H
    
    H --> I["Evaluator Agent<br/>🎯 Filter Relevance"]
    I --> J["Synthesizer Agent<br/>✍️ Generate Response"]
    J --> K["Final Response<br/>📝 Coherent Answer"]
    
    subgraph "RAG Pipeline Components"
        D1["TensorLake<br/>Document Parser"] --> D2["Voyage Context 3<br/>Embeddings"]
        D2 --> D3["Milvus Vector DB<br/>Similarity Search"]
        D3 --> D
    end
    
    subgraph "Memory Components"
        E1["Zep Cloud<br/>Conversation History"] --> E
        E2["User Preferences<br/>Context Summaries"] --> E
    end
    
    subgraph "Generation"
        J1["OpenAI GPT<br/>Structured Output"] --> J
        J2["Citation Management<br/>Confidence Scoring"] --> J
    end
    
    style A fill:#e1f5fe
    style K fill:#e8f5e8
    style I fill:#fff3e0
    style J fill:#f3e5f5

Project Structure

context-engineering-workflow/
├── 📁 src/                          # Main source code directory
│   ├── 📁 workflows/                # 🎯 Complete workflow orchestration
│   │   ├── 📄 agents.py            # Agent creation from YAML configs
│   │   ├── 📄 tasks.py             # Task creation from YAML configs  
│   │   ├── 📄 flow.py              # Main ResearchAssistantFlow
│   ├── 📁 tools/                   # 🔧 All specialized tools
│   │   ├── 📄 rag_tool.py          # RAG search functionality
│   │   ├── 📄 memory_tool.py       # Memory retrieval tool
│   │   ├── 📄 arxiv_tool.py        # ArXiv academic search
│   │   ├── 📄 web_search_tool.py   # Web search via Firecrawl
│   ├── 📁 rag/                     # 📚 RAG pipeline components
│   │   ├── 📄 rag_pipeline.py      # Unified RAG orchestration
│   │   ├── 📄 retriever.py         # Milvus vector database
│   │   ├── 📄 embeddings.py        # Contextualized embeddings
│   ├── 📁 document_processing/     # 📄 Document parsing & processing
│   │   ├── 📄 doc_parser.py        # TensorLake document parser
│   ├── 📁 memory/                  # 🧠 Memory management
│   │   ├── 📄 memory.py            # Zep memory layer
│   ├── 📁 generation/              # ✍️ Response generation
│   │   ├── 📄 generation.py        # Structured response generation
│   ├── 📁 config/                  # ⚙️ Configuration management
│   │   ├── 📄 config_loader.py     # YAML configuration loader
├── 📁 config/                      # 📋 YAML configuration files
│   ├── 📁 agents/                  # Agent configurations
│   │   └── 📄 research_agents.yaml # Agent roles, goals, backstories
│   └── 📁 tasks/                   # Task configurations  
│       └── 📄 research_tasks.yaml  # Task descriptions, expected outputs
├── 📁 data/                        # 📊 Research documents (PDFs)
├── 📁 outputs/                     # 📤 Generated outputs and results
├── 📄 app.py                       # 🌐 Streamlit web interface
├── 📄 pyproject.toml               # 🔧 Project configuration
├── 📄 uv.lock                      # 🔒 Dependency lock file
└── 📄 README.md

Installation & Setup

1. Install dependencies: First, install uv and set up the environment:

   # MacOS/Linux
   curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
   
   # Windows
   powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

   Install dependencies:

   # Create a new directory for our project
   uv init research-assistant
   cd research-assistant
   
   # Create virtual environment and activate it
   uv venv
   source .venv/bin/activate  # MacOS/Linux
   
   .venv\Scripts\activate     # Windows
   
   # Install dependencies
   uv sync

2. Set up environment variables: Create a .env file with your API keys:

   TENSORLAKE_API_KEY=your_tensorlake_key
   VOYAGE_API_KEY=your_voyage_key
   OPENAI_API_KEY=your_openai_key
   ZEP_API_KEY=your_zep_key
   FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=your_firecrawl_key

   Get the API keys here:

   • Tensorlake →
   • Zep AI →
   • Firecrawl →
   • OpenAI →
   • Voyage →

3. Prepare documents: Place your research documents in the data/ directory (PDF format supported)

Usage

uv run app.py or streamlit run app.py

Key Features

1. Extended citations support

Each response includes comprehensive source attribution with a:

🎯 Source Relevance Summary

• Relevant Sources: List of sources used
• Relevance Scores: Confidence scores (0-1) for each source
• Reasoning: Explanation of source selection

2. Multi-Source Intelligence

• Combines document knowledge, conversation memory, web search, and external APIs
• Each source operates independently and in parallel for efficiency

3. Intelligent Context Evaluation

• Evaluator agent filters irrelevant information
• Only relevant context is used for final response generation

4. Coherent Response Synthesis

• Synthesizer agent creates well-structured responses
• Proper citation and confidence scoring
• Handles insufficient context gracefully

5. Persistent Memory

• Conversation history stored in Zep Cloud
• User preferences and context maintained across sessions
• Agentic memory with graph-based internal representations

API Requirements

• TensorLake: Document parsing and structured extraction
• Voyage AI: Contextualized embeddings
• OpenAI: Response generation with structured outputs
• Zep Cloud: Persistent memory and conversation management
• Firecrawl: Web search capabilities

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Contribution