Vortex under Ripplet: An Empirical Study of RAG-enabled Applications

LLMs enhanced by retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) provide effective solutions in various application scenarios. However, developers face challenges in integrating RAG-enhanced LLMs into software systems, due to lack of interface specification, requirements from software context, and complicated system management. In this paper, we manually studied 100 open-source applications that incorporate RAG-enhanced LLMs, and their issue reports. We have found that more than 98% of applications contain multiple integration defects that harm software functionality, efficiency, and security. We have also generalized 19 defect patterns and proposed guidelines to tackle them. We hope this work could aid LLM-enabled software development and motivate future research.