Aho-Corasick

Vector embedding calls are the hidden tax on every RAG pipeline. You pay latency, you pay API cost, you get probabilistic results that vary run to run. There is a class of problem where none of that is acceptable. This post shows how Terraphim replaces embedding calls with Aho-Corasick finite-state automata -- deterministic, auditable, and under one millisecond for 1.4 million patterns.

Vector databases are probabilistic and slow. Graph embeddings are deterministic and sub-millisecond. If you are building context for an AI coding agent — or any system where you need to know why a result came back — the difference is not academic. It changes what your application is allowed to promise.