💻 Module 1: RAG & Tech Stack Setup (Foundation)

1. Supabase Overview

• What is Supabase?
  Supabase is an open-source alternative to Firebase, built on top of PostgreSQL. It gives you:

  • A SQL database

  • Authentication

  • File storage

  • APIs out of the box

  • Plus, a Postgres Vector extension that makes it a full vector store.

• Why Supabase in this tutorial?

  • ✅ All-in-one platform → Instead of juggling Pinecone for vectors, Firebase for auth, and Postgres for structured data, Supabase covers everything in one place.

  • ✅ Free tier friendly → Perfect for learners and small projects (Pinecone and others usually limit or start charging fast).

  • ✅ Postgres foundation → You can use normal relational queries (structured data) side by side with vector search (semantic data). Pinecone/Qdrant are only vector databases — you’d still need another database for structured data.

  • ✅ Production-ready → Scales well, open source, and trusted by startups building real products.

  • ✅ Lower friction → One dashboard, one connection, fewer moving parts.

• When to consider Pinecone or Qdrant?

  • If your project handles billions of embeddings at scale (e.g., enterprise search engines).

  • If you want advanced vector-specific features (like hybrid search, HNSW optimizations, or distributed scaling).

  • But for 90% of practical AI projects (like travel assistants, chatbots, internal tools), Supabase is more than enough.

• Vector Store vs. Vector Database

  • Vector Store (like the Postgres vector extension in Supabase):

    • Basically a database + vector similarity search.

    • Good for projects where you want normal SQL data + semantic search together.

    • Example: “Give me this customer’s last 5 support chats” AND “find documents similar to this question.”

• • Vector Database (like Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate):

    • Specialized just for vectors.

    • Optimized for scaling to billions of embeddings and advanced search (like hybrid keyword + semantic).

    • But usually, you still need another DB for structured data (customers, orders, etc).