Use RAG when AI needs access to changing enterprise knowledge such as policies, manuals, contracts, or internal documentation.
Use live APIs when the decision depends on current transactional information such as inventory, pricing, account balances, entitlements, or order status.
Fine-tuning becomes relevant when the model needs repeatable domain-specific behavior, terminology, classification patterns, or output characteristics that prompting and retrieval alone cannot deliver efficiently.
These approaches solve different problems and can be combined within the same AI integration.
