Introduction to LangChain: The "Why" Before the
"What"
The central objective of this lecture is to explain why a framework like LangChain is
necessary for building applications powered by Large Language Models (LLMs). Before
diving into the technical details of what LangChain is, it's crucial to understand the
fundamental engineering problems it solves.
The core problem is illustrated with a startup idea: an application that allows users to "chat
with their PDFs." [02:24] This application would enable users to:
● Ask for a simple explanation of a page (e.g., "Explain this to a 5-year-old") [03:40]
● Generate true/false questions from the content [03:59]
● Create structured notes on a specific concept [04:05]
System Design for a "Chat with PDF" Application
High-Level System Overview
The lecturer first outlines a high-level, intuitive design for the application [04:43].
1. User Uploads PDF: The PDF is stored in a database.
2. User Asks a Question: For instance, "What are the assumptions of linear regression?"
[05:06]
3. Find Relevant Pages: The system must find the most relevant pages in the PDF to
answer the query.
○ A simple keyword search is inefficient as it might return many irrelevant pages
[06:02].
○ The better approach is semantic search, which understands the meaning and
context of the query to find contextually similar pages [06:24].
4. Form a System Query: The retrieved relevant pages are combined with the user's
original question to create a new, context-rich query for the application's "brain" [07:24].
5. Process with the "Brain" (LLM): This central component has two primary functions:
○ Natural Language Understanding (NLU): To deeply comprehend the user's query
[07:55].
○ Context-Aware Text Generation: To generate a precise answer based only on the
provided relevant pages [08:13].
6. Deliver the Answer: The final generated answer is displayed to the user [09:07].
Why is providing only relevant pages crucial? The lecturer emphasizes that it is
computationally less expensive and yields much better, more focused results. It's like asking a
teacher a question about a specific page in a book versus handing them the entire book and
asking a vague question [09:50].
Deep Dive: How Semantic Search Works
Semantic search relies on converting text into numerical representations called embeddings,
which are essentially vectors [11:58].
● The Analogy: Imagine three paragraphs about three different cricketers (Virat Kohli,
Jasprit Bumrah, Rohit Sharma).
1. Each paragraph is converted into a 100-dimensional vector (an embedding) [12:26].
2. A user's query, like "How many runs has Virat scored?", is also converted into a
100-dimensional vector [12:46].
3. The system then calculates the similarity between the query vector and all the
paragraph vectors.
4. The paragraph whose vector is most similar to the query vector is identified as the
correct source for the answer [13:40].
Low-Level (Technical) System Design
Here, the lecturer breaks down the process into its technical components [14:00].
1. A user uploads a PDF to cloud storage like AWS S3 [14:05].
2. A Document Loader fetches the PDF into the system [14:31].
3. A Text Splitter divides the document into smaller, manageable chunks (e.g., pages or
paragraphs) [14:43].
4. An Embedding Model (a separate ML model) generates a vector embedding for each
chunk [15:22].
5. These embeddings are stored in a vector database [15:39].
6. When a user asks a question, their query is also run through the Embedding Model to
create a query embedding [16:04].
7. This query embedding is used to search the vector database to find the top 'k' most
similar chunks (e.g., the 5 most relevant pages) [16:18].
8. These chunks, along with the original query, are formatted into a prompt (the system
query) [17:02].
9. This prompt is sent to the LLM, which performs NLU and text generation to produce the
final answer [17:15].
The Engineering Challenges and How
LangChain Solves Them
Challenge 1: Building the "Brain"
● The Problem: Creating a model from scratch that can
understand natural language and generate contextually relevant
text is an immense and complex task [17:53].
● The Solution: This problem has already been solved by
Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT. We don't need to
build one; we can use an existing one [18:44].
Challenge 2: The Cost of Hosting LLMs
● The Problem: LLMs are massive deep learning models that require enormous
computational power and specialized engineering to host for inference [19:46].
● The Solution: Companies like OpenAI offer their LLMs as APIs. This allows developers to
simply make an API call and pay for usage, removing the massive overhead of hosting the
model themselves [21:28].
Challenge 3: Orchestrating All the Components
● The Problem: The biggest challenge is the engineering orchestration. A developer
would have to manually write code to connect all the different components: the cloud
storage, the document loader, the text splitter, the embedding model, the vector
database, and the LLM API. This "boilerplate code" is complex, time-consuming, and
makes the system rigid. Swapping out one component (e.g., changing from OpenAI's LLM
to Google's) would require significant code rewrites [23:45].
● The Solution: LangChain!
○ LangChain is an open-source framework that acts as the glue, providing a
"plug-and-play" interface for all these components [25:12].
○ It handles the complex orchestration behind the scenes, allowing developers to focus
on the application's core logic instead of the boilerplate code [25:36].
Key Benefits of Using LangChain
● The Concept of "Chains": LangChain allows you to link components together in a chain,
where the output of one step automatically becomes the input for the next. It even
supports complex logic like parallel or conditional chains [26:46].
● Model Agnostic Development: LangChain makes it incredibly easy to swap out
components. You can switch from an OpenAI LLM to a Google LLM, or from one vector
database to another, with minimal changes to your code [27:58].
● A Complete Ecosystem: It provides a vast library of pre-built integrations for nearly
every type of document loader, text splitter, embedding model, and database you might
need [28:39].
● Memory and State Handling: LangChain has built-in features for managing
conversational memory. This is critical for chatbots to remember the context of a
conversation. For example, if you ask "What is linear regression?" and then follow up with
"What are its assumptions?", the system knows "its" refers to linear regression [29:19].
Common Applications Built with LangChain
LangChain is the backbone for a variety of powerful LLM applications:
● Conversational Chatbots: Scaling customer support and interaction [30:47].
● AI Knowledge Assistants: Chatbots that can answer questions based on a specific,
private knowledge base (e.g., a chatbot for an online course that knows the content of all
the lectures) [32:03].
● AI Agents: Advanced bots that can not only converse but also take actions in the real
world, like booking flights or hotels based on a verbal command [32:52].
● Workflow Automation: Automating personal or professional workflows [34:18].
● Summarization and Research Assistance: Tools that can process and summarize large,
private documents (like research papers or internal company reports) that cannot be
uploaded to public services [34:31].
Alternatives to LangChain
The lecturer notes that while LangChain is a major player, other frameworks exist, including
LlamaIndex [36:02] and Haystack [36:06].
