AI Council Review: Research Bridge

Reviewers

Architect: System design, API contracts, data flow
DevOps: Deployment, monitoring, infrastructure
QA: Testing strategy, edge cases, validation
Security: Authentication, abuse prevention, data handling
Cost Analyst: Pricing, efficiency, ROI

Review Questions

Architect

Q: Is the async pattern throughout the stack justified? A: Yes. SearXNG + LLM calls are I/O bound; async prevents blocking.
Q: Why FastAPI over Flask/Django? A: Native async, automatic OpenAPI docs, Pydantic validation.
Q: Should the synthesizer be a separate service? A: Not initially. Monolith first, extract if scale demands.
Q: Kimi for Coding API compatibility? A: OpenAI-compatible, but requires special User-Agent header. Handled in client config.

DevOps

Q: SearXNG self-hosted requirements? A: 1 CPU, 512MB RAM, ~5GB disk. Can run on same host or separate.
Q: Monitoring strategy? A: Prometheus metrics + structured logging. Alert on error rate >1%.

QA

Q: How to test LLM responses deterministically? A: Mock Kimi responses in unit tests. E2E uses real API (no cost concerns with existing subscription).
Q: What defines "acceptable" answer quality? A: Blind test: 20 queries, human rates Research Bridge vs Perplexity. Target: ≥80% parity.

Security

Q: API key exposure risk? A: Kimi key in env vars only. Rotate if compromised. No client-side exposure.
Q: Rate limiting sufficient? A: 30 req/min per IP prevents casual abuse. Global limit as circuit breaker.
Q: User-Agent header leak risk? A: Header is hardcoded in backend, never exposed to clients. Low risk.

Cost Analyst

Q: Realistic monthly cost at 1000 queries/month? A: $0 - Kimi for Coding via existing subscription, SearXNG self-hosted. vs $15-30 with Perplexity.
Q: When does this NOT make sense? A: If setup effort (~10h) not justified for expected query volume. But at $0 marginal cost, break-even is immediate.

Consensus

Proceed with Phase 1. Architecture is sound, risks identified and mitigated. Zero marginal cost makes this compelling even at low query volumes.

Conditions for Phase 2:

Phase 1 latency <2s for search-only
Test coverage >80%
SearXNG stable for 48h continuous operation
User-Agent header handling verified

Review Date: 2026-03-14
Status: ✅ Approved for implementation

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