Ray Cashmore

Personal portfolio website featuring an AI-powered conversational interface with RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation).

Technical Highlights

RAG-Powered AI Chat

A "Virtual Ray" chat interface that answers questions about my experience and skills using semantic search:

• Vector Embeddings: OpenAI text-embedding-3-small with pre-computed 1536-dimensional vectors
• Semantic Retrieval: Custom cosine similarity search with configurable threshold filtering
• Knowledge Base: Structured chunks with typed metadata (experience, skills, identity, boundaries)
• Prompt Engineering: Context-aware system prompts with hallucination prevention

Multi-Provider LLM Abstraction

• Environment-driven provider selection (Claude/GPT-4o)
• TanStack AI adapters with SSE streaming
• React hooks integration via @tanstack/ai-react

Feature Flagging

• LaunchDarkly server-side SDK integration
• Singleton pattern with async initialization
• Graceful degradation with fallback defaults

Tech Stack

Category	Technology
Framework	Astro 5 with React 19 islands
AI/ML	OpenAI Embeddings, Claude/GPT-4o, TanStack AI
Feature Flags	LaunchDarkly
Styling	Tailwind CSS v4 with custom theme system
Content	Astro Content Collections with Zod validation
Deployment	Vercel (serverless functions)
Runtime	Bun

Architecture

src/
├── lib/
│   ├── rag/           # RAG pipeline (embeddings, retrieval, prompts)
│   ├── ai-adapter.ts  # Multi-provider LLM abstraction
│   └── launchdarkly.ts
├── components/        # React islands (Chat, etc.)
├── pages/
│   ├── api/           # Serverless endpoints
│   └── thoughts/      # Blog with dynamic routing
└── content/           # Markdown content collections

data/
├── knowledge-source.json  # Human-authored knowledge base
└── knowledge.json         # Pre-computed embeddings (529KB)

Getting Started

bun install      # Install dependencies
bun run dev      # Start development server
bun run build    # Production build
bun run preview  # Preview production build

Environment Variables

OPENAI_API_KEY=         # For embeddings and GPT-4o
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=      # For Claude
LAUNCHDARKLY_SDK_KEY=   # Feature flags
AI_PROVIDER=            # "anthropic" or "openai"