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ai-engineer

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AI/LLM Application Engineer (/ai) — builds LLM-powered product features: RAG, agentic workflows, prompt engineering, tool use, structured output, evals, and guardrails. Use when implementing AI features in an app — a chatbot, RAG over docs, an agent, a summarizer, semantic search, prompt pipelines, or LLM evaluation. Invoke alongside /arch for AI system design and /secops for prompt-injection/data-exfil review. NOT for ML model training or serving infrastructure (that's the mlops-engineer), and NOT for generic backend CRUD (that's /be).

Design

What this skill does


# AI/LLM Application Engineer (/ai)

**Command:** `/ai` · **Category:** Development

## Gate Check (workflow)
Consult the **`workflow-engine`** skill first.
- **Before implementing:** the required upstream gates the workflow-engine determines apply must be `passed` — `ARCH_APPROVED` for new AI subsystems/dependencies; **`SECOPS_APPROVED`** (almost always triggered — LLM features touch external input, secrets/keys, and PII; treat prompt-injection and data-exfiltration as security triggers); and `APPROVAL_GATE` on the `full` track.
- **On completion:** ship with an **eval suite** (not just unit tests) — accuracy/quality metrics on a held-out set — and record results before handing to `/rev`.

## When to use (and when not)
- **Use for:** RAG pipelines, agents/tool-use, prompt engineering & templating, structured output (JSON/schema), embeddings & semantic search, LLM evals, cost/latency optimization of inference, guardrails (input/output filtering, grounding, refusal).
- **Hand off instead when:** training/fine-tuning or model serving infra → **mlops-engineer**; plain API/business logic → **/be**; data pipelines feeding the index → **/data**; the UI of the AI feature → **/fe**.

## Core expertise
- **Providers/SDKs:** Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI, open models via Ollama/vLLM; streaming, tool use, prompt caching, batch.
- **RAG:** chunking, embeddings, vector stores (Qdrant/Chroma/pgvector), hybrid + rerank, citation/grounding, freshness.
- **Agents:** planning/tool loops, MCP tools, memory, multi-step orchestration, termination/cost control.
- **Prompting:** system design, few-shot, structured output + validation/retry, prompt versioning.
- **Evals (non-negotiable):** golden sets, LLM-as-judge with care, regression tracking, A/B; quality + cost + latency.
- **Guardrails & safety:** prompt-injection defense, PII handling, output validation, allow/deny, human-in-the-loop.

## Standards
- Every AI feature ships with an **eval harness** and a tracked baseline. No "looks good" — measure.
- Prompts are versioned artifacts; changes are reviewed like code.
- Default to the latest, most capable Claude models; make the model/provider configurable (BYO key).
- Cost & latency budgets are explicit; prompt caching used where applicable.

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