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Learn about the advantages of custom software application development, downsides to be aware of, and 9 tips for picking the best partner.

Is your organization facing technology-induced headaches? It's only becoming more complicated to keep up with rapidly evolving tech while managing multiple systems. Technology consulting addresses this constantly shifting environment, and the market is booming — valued at $48.3 billion in 2020 and expected to grow at 11.5% CAGR through 2028. The right technology consultant doesn't just bring technical knowledge, but the ability to solve underlying business issues.

The “consulting hand-off” of software projects is notorious — and for good reason. There are many horror stories of major consulting companies leaving customers with a barely functioning product and a hefty invoice. A good partner will always leave their client in a better place, whether the engagement is a two-hour meeting or a two-year cloud migration.

We are thrilled to announce a strategic partnership between Focused Labs and Honeycomb.io, marking a significant milestone in our journey to drive incremental modernization of legacy systems. This collaboration is designed to extend the exceptional white-glove experience that Honeycomb's customers have come to know and expect, combining cutting-edge observability with hands-on engineering enablement.

Focused Labs is excited to announce its strategic partnership with LangChain, a leading provider of GenAI solutions and open source. This collaboration marks a significant step in bringing cutting-edge AI technologies to the forefront of enterprise development, combining Focused Labs' lean development expertise with LangChain's AI-driven tools and frameworks.

In Part 2 of this series, we build a React and TypeScript frontend for our AI chatbot using TailwindCSS. You'll learn how to stream LLM responses to the browser with Server Sent Events, display source documents alongside AI answers, and connect it all to the LangServe backend we built in Part 1.

Let's explore a real-world example of debugging a RAG-type application. While updating our company knowledge base, I discovered that basic queries received correct answers, but follow-up questions lacked appropriate context — conversational memory had stopped working. Here's how I traced the bug step by step using a mix of traditional and AI-specific debugging techniques.

At Focused Labs, we're not only about tech — we're about making a real impact in our community. Through employee donation matching, charitable prizes, and a laptop purchase program that gives back, we've built a culture where giving is woven into everything we do. Since 2022, we've matched over $17,000 in employee donations and we're not stopping anytime soon.

Are you searching for an exceptional framework to build custom AI applications? LangChain's latest update using LangChain Expression Language (LCEL) offers streaming, async support, parallel execution, and more right out of the box. Here's how we upgraded our RAG application to use LCEL — step by step, from whiteboard to production.

The holiday season is the perfect time to dive into new technology — and this year, that means building applications with AI. There's tons of content about cool AI startups and crafting the perfect prompt, but what about actually building production apps? Let's get technical and dive into LangChain Expression Language (LCEL), a composable interface that gives you streaming, async support, and parallel execution right out of the box.

OpenAI has ventured into Retrieval Augmented Generation with its latest offering, Assistants. Think ChatGPT, but with the ability to ask it about custom information. While it doesn't yet lead the pack in creating AI-driven knowledge bases, being able to spin up a custom chatbot in a couple of hours with roughly 75% accuracy is incredible. Here's what developers should know about its capabilities and limitations.

Since the announcement of GPTs, I've been itching to create one focused on accessibility. But as I delved deeper, I realized that simply replicating existing accessibility checkers wouldn't be enough. I pivoted to building a comprehensive design assistant — one that analyzes screenshots and offers insights based on WCAG guidelines, Nielsen Norman heuristics, UX laws, and material design principles from Google and Apple.

Interested in building an AI-powered app using generative models? A common challenge is latency — users waiting up to 30 seconds before seeing AI suggestions. By leveraging OpenAI's streaming feature with Server Sent Events, we cut the wait for first content from 30 seconds down to half a second. Here are two practical tips for enhancing your AI app's user experience through effective streaming.

Stepping into the world of AI, I quickly grasped the enormous potential of domain-specific chatbots. My team and I crafted a smart AI chatbot tailored for the Focused Labs website — not just a simple chat interface, but a comprehensive “Knowledge Hub” that leverages natural-language models. Here are the top six insights I uncovered during the process, from orchestrating multiple AI models to thinking less like a programmer and more like a linguist.

Why Focused Labs love Lightning Talks and how your organization can integrate them into your events as novel team building opportunities.

In the world of technology, it's easy to be lured by the promise of a brand new system. But tales of cost overruns, schedule slippages, and features left undelivered are common regardless of industry. That's why organizations should be looking for innovative ways to maximize their existing systems — tapping into underutilized modules and reengineering key components so old systems can produce new results.