If your mental model of RAG is "chunk → embed → search → LLM," you're missing about 80% of what actually makes a RAG system production-ready. Here's a practical checklist across all 10 lifecycles I ran into while building one. Full technical breakdown with diagrams is on Hashnode (linked above)...
Source: [Dev.to](https://dev.to/tanmay_bhurkunde/a-developers-checklist-for-every-rag-lifecycle-beyond-chunk-embed-search-5ab9)