One-Line Summary: Create the project directory, set up a Python virtual environment, install the four dependencies, and configure your API keys.

Prerequisites: Python 3.11+ installed, a terminal, an OpenAI API key, an Anthropic API key, a free Supabase account

Create the Project

# Create the project directory and navigate into it
mkdir rag-pipeline
cd rag-pipeline
 
# Create the folder structure
mkdir -p data src
touch src/__init__.py

Set Up the Virtual Environment

Always use a virtual environment to isolate your dependencies:

# Create a virtual environment
python3 -m venv venv
 
# Activate it
# macOS / Linux:
source venv/bin/activate
 
# Windows:
# venv\Scripts\activate

Your terminal prompt should now show (venv) at the beginning.

Install Dependencies

Create a requirements.txt file:

# requirements.txt
# ==========================================
# RAG Pipeline Dependencies
# ==========================================
 
# Supabase client — database + vector storage
supabase==2.13.0
 
# LLM provider — Claude for answer generation
anthropic==0.49.0
 
# Embeddings — text-embedding-3-small
openai==1.66.3
 
# Environment variable management
python-dotenv==1.1.0

Install everything:

pip install -r requirements.txt

That is it — four packages. No frameworks, no Docker images, no extra infrastructure.

Configure API Keys

Create a .env file in the project root:

# .env
# ==========================================
# API Keys — DO NOT commit this file
# ==========================================
 
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-your-openai-api-key-here
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-your-anthropic-api-key-here
SUPABASE_URL=https://your-project-id.supabase.co
SUPABASE_KEY=your-supabase-anon-key-here

Where to get these:

  • OpenAI key: platform.openai.com/api-keys — used only for embeddings (about $0.02 per million tokens).
  • Anthropic key: console.anthropic.com — used for the generation step.
  • Supabase URL and key: You will get these when you create a Supabase project in the next step.

Add .env to your .gitignore:

echo ".env" >> .gitignore
echo "venv/" >> .gitignore
echo "__pycache__/" >> .gitignore

Create the Config Module

Create a shared config file that all modules will import:

# src/config.py
# ==========================================
# Shared configuration for the RAG pipeline
# ==========================================
 
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv
 
load_dotenv()
 
# Supabase
SUPABASE_URL = os.getenv("SUPABASE_URL")
SUPABASE_KEY = os.getenv("SUPABASE_KEY")
 
# API keys
OPENAI_API_KEY = os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY = os.getenv("ANTHROPIC_API_KEY")
 
# RAG settings
CHUNK_SIZE = 500          # characters per chunk
CHUNK_OVERLAP = 50        # overlapping characters between chunks
EMBEDDING_MODEL = "text-embedding-3-small"
CLAUDE_MODEL = "claude-sonnet-4-20250514"
TABLE_NAME = "documents"
TOP_K = 3                 # number of chunks to retrieve per query

Verify the Installation

# verify_setup.py
# ==========================================
# Quick sanity check — run once to confirm setup
# ==========================================
 
from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os
 
load_dotenv()
 
# Verify API keys are set
assert os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY"), "OPENAI_API_KEY not found in .env"
assert os.getenv("ANTHROPIC_API_KEY"), "ANTHROPIC_API_KEY not found in .env"
 
# Verify core imports
from supabase import create_client
from openai import OpenAI
from anthropic import Anthropic
 
print("All imports successful.")
print(f"OpenAI key: ...{os.getenv('OPENAI_API_KEY')[-4:]}")
print(f"Anthropic key: ...{os.getenv('ANTHROPIC_API_KEY')[-4:]}")
print("Setup complete — you are ready to build.")

Run it:

python verify_setup.py

If you see "All imports successful", your environment is ready.

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