Try It First With Fake Search

Your first working RAG doesn't need a vector database. Three files, a fake lookup table, and an answering rule are all it takes.

Let's think about this for a second

Fake search is your teaching assistant. Match the words in the question against file names or titles. Found a match? Read that chunk. No match? No match. Only add embeddings once this works. It's like testing the river with a stepping stone before you build the bridge. A big framework builds a beautiful bridge — but if you don't know which bank you're crossing to, you don't need it yet.

Let's connect it to everyday life

Three files — phones.md, uniform.md, late.md. If the question contains "phone" or "mobile," return phones.md. A single JavaScript object is all you need. The correct answer is the phone rule. If "uniform" isn't mentioned, don't send it. Only move on once this test passes. If you can't use Node yet, you can even sketch a "question → file" table on paper.

• Build a fake lookup table with 3 files
• Return exactly one file per question
• If there's no match, say so

Let's try it hands-on together

const notes = {
  phone: "စာသင်ချိန်မှာ ဖုန်းပိတ်ရမည်",
  uniform: "အဖြူရှပ်နှင့် အနက်ဘောင်းဘီ",
  late: "နောက်ကျရင် မှတ်တမ်းတင်သည်",
};

function fakeSearch(question) {
  if (/ဖုန်း|မိုဘိုင်း|phone/i.test(question)) return notes.phone;
  return null;
}

You'll be able to try out the RAG loop without vectors and return the correct file.