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ADR-001: Provider registry (AWS / Azure / mock)

Status: Accepted
Date: 2026-05-19

Context

The upstream chabot targeted a single cloud stack (Bedrock + OpenSearch). Portfolio and production goals require running locally without credentials, testing in CI, and supporting both AWS and Azure retrieval paths without forking the API or UI.

Decision

Introduce a provider registry selected by environment variables:

  • LLM_PROVIDER — aws | azure | mock
  • RETRIEVER_PROVIDER — aws | azure | mock
  • RAG_FORCE_MOCK=true — forces mock for demos and CI regardless of other settings

Implementations live under backend/app/services/providers/. The API and Vue client stay provider-agnostic.

Consequences

Positive

  • Clone → mock mode → chat in minutes without cloud accounts.
  • tox -e lint,backend,frontend-vue runs on every PR without AWS secrets.
  • Same response shape (message, metadata, sources) across providers.

Negative

  • Operators must understand env var matrix (documented in .env.example and OPERATIONS.md).
  • Azure and AWS paths can drift in retrieval behavior; RAGAS baselines are stack-specific.

Alternatives considered

Alternative Why not
Single-cloud only Blocks Azure demos and multicloud portfolio narrative
Implicit provider from .env only Hard to support and debug; explicit vars beat magic
Separate repos per cloud Duplicates API, UI, and eval harness

References