You may have noticed that a general-purpose AI sometimes makes up answers, especially when you ask it about YOUR business. The fix is called RAG. Three letters, one very simple idea.
RAG: look it up before answering
RAG stands for Retrieval-Augmented Generation. Translated into everyday language: instead of answering from memory, the AI first goes looking for the right information in your documents, then writes its answer based on what it found.
The most accurate image: an assistant you ask a question. Without RAG, they answer off the top of their head, from memories that are sometimes fuzzy. With RAG, they open the right binder first, read the relevant page, and answer with the document in hand.
The difference is huge. They no longer guess: they quote.
Why it is more reliable
A classic AI learned from millions of public texts. But it knows nothing about your prices, your delivery terms, or the name of your supplier. Ask it anyway, and it may embroider an answer that sounds plausible but is wrong. That is what people call a "hallucination": the AI invents with total confidence.
RAG greatly reduces that risk, for two reasons:
- Less invention. The AI leans on a real text you gave it, not on a vague memory.
- Answers tailored to your business. Your prices, your processes, your email templates: the answer matches YOUR reality, not some average of the web.
Without RAG, the AI answers what it thinks it knows. With RAG, it answers what YOUR documents say.
You gain confidence: one answer you can verify is worth ten brilliant but shaky ones.
In practice, with chyll
This is exactly the principle behind the business memory in chyll. You explain once who you are, what you sell, how you talk to your clients. You can also connect your tools and your files: price list, terms and conditions, product sheets.
From then on, chyll draws on all of it for every task. When it prepares a quote, it pulls your real prices. When it drafts a reply to a client, it relies on your actual terms. One brain, one memory: every task rests on the same base of information. You never have to provide it again.
And since your data stays hosted in Europe, processed in compliance with GDPR (the European rule that protects personal data) and never used to train a model, that base remains yours.
What to remember
RAG is not a technology reserved for engineers: it is simply the reflex of checking before speaking. For a small business, it is the difference between an AI that fakes it and an AI that genuinely knows your file. Give it your documents, and its answers stop being generic and become yours: reviewable, reliable, grounded in your activity.