CHAPTER 18 · Reference Architecture and a Design Checklist · 14 / 15
The build order, one more time
If you're starting fresh: skeleton & schema → provider layer → ingestion → agent loop → tools → prompt & citations → generation → editing → context assembly → auth & access → secrets → integrations → workflows → bulk extraction → storage/downloads, with observability, reliability, and cost discipline woven through from the start. (Chapter 19 of the explanations folder walks this order concretely.)