# rag-conversation This template is used for [conversational](https://python.langchain.com/docs/expression_language/cookbook/retrieval#conversational-retrieval-chain) [retrieval](https://python.langchain.com/docs/use_cases/question_answering/), which is one of the most popular LLM use-cases. It passes both a conversation history and retrieved documents into an LLM for synthesis. ## Environment Setup This template uses Pinecone as a vectorstore and requires that `PINECONE_API_KEY`, `PINECONE_ENVIRONMENT`, and `PINECONE_INDEX` are set. Set the `OPENAI_API_KEY` environment variable to access the OpenAI models. ## Usage To use this package, you should first have the LangChain CLI installed: ```shell pip install -U "langchain-cli[serve]" ``` To create a new LangChain project and install this as the only package, you can do: ```shell langchain app new my-app --package rag-conversation ``` If you want to add this to an existing project, you can just run: ```shell langchain app add rag-conversation ``` And add the following code to your `server.py` file: ```python from rag_conversation import chain as rag_conversation_chain add_routes(app, rag_conversation_chain, path="/rag-conversation") ``` (Optional) Let's now configure LangSmith. LangSmith will help us trace, monitor and debug LangChain applications. LangSmith is currently in private beta, you can sign up [here](https://smith.langchain.com/). If you don't have access, you can skip this section ```shell export LANGCHAIN_TRACING_V2=true export LANGCHAIN_API_KEY= export LANGCHAIN_PROJECT= # if not specified, defaults to "default" ``` If you are inside this directory, then you can spin up a LangServe instance directly by: ```shell langchain serve ``` This will start the FastAPI app with a server is running locally at [http://localhost:8000](http://localhost:8000) We can see all templates at [http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs](http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs) We can access the playground at [http://127.0.0.1:8000/rag-conversation/playground](http://127.0.0.1:8000/rag-conversation/playground) We can access the template from code with: ```python from langserve.client import RemoteRunnable runnable = RemoteRunnable("http://localhost:8000/rag-conversation") ```