Generative AI Design Patterns

Chapter 1. Introduction

GenAI is so powerful and easy to use that even nontechnical users can easily prototype very compelling applications on top of GenAI. However, taking such GenAI prototypes to production is hard because GenAI models are unreliable—they can hallucinate, return different answers to the same input, and can have surprising limitations because of how they are trained. The design patterns in this book capture best practices and solutions to these and other recurring problems you’re likely to encounter when building production applications on top of GenAI models.

GenAI Design Patterns

Design patterns, in software engineering, are proven solutions to common problems that occur during software design and development. They represent standardized best practices that have evolved over time through the collective experience of software developers. Design patterns are important because they establish a common vocabulary developers can use to communicate efficiently and because they help improve software quality, maintainability, and scalability.

The concept of design patterns was heavily influenced by the work of architect Christopher Alexander, who introduced patterns in architecture in his book A Pattern Language (Oxford University Press, 1977). Design patterns gained significant prominence in software engineering with the publication of the book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides ...