Haystack Development · Belfast
Haystack Development in Belfast
Building search and retrieval systems on Haystack for Belfast organisations, where the pipeline is declared rather than implied. Components are wired into an explicit graph you can inspect, swap and measure a piece at a time — which matters because retrieval quality problems are almost always located in one component, and finding out which one is most of the work.
Why this comes up
The problem
Answer quality is poor and there is no way to tell whether the retriever, the ranker or the prompt is responsible.
What you get
What we deliver
- Pipelines defined explicitly, with each component measurable in isolation
- Retrieval and generation evaluated separately, since they fail differently
- Classic keyword search used alongside embeddings where precision matters
- Rankers applied and their contribution actually measured, not assumed
- Document preprocessing tuned to the formats you genuinely hold
- Pipelines versioned, so a quality change can be traced to a specific alteration
Want this scoped for your business in Belfast?
Thirty minutes, no charge, no sales script. You leave with a written summary of what haystack development would actually involve — whether or not you use us.
Working in Belfast
Northern Ireland
Belfast has a substantial fintech and cyber security sector, and businesses trading here deal with a distinct regulatory position post-Brexit that affects goods moving between Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the Republic.
Fintech and security-accredited systems, plus trading platforms that handle the specific customs position on goods.
Sectors we work with in Belfast
- Fintech
- Cyber Security
- Film & Media
- Manufacturing
- Higher Education
What we work with
Technologies and platforms
- Haystack
- Python
- Elasticsearch
- Claude API
Who we work with
Industries we serve
- Professional services
- Legal services
- Publishing
- Research organisations
- Technology companies
Why us
Why Belfast businesses choose Asionis
- Projects typically launched within 4–8 weeks
- No long-term contracts required
- All team members UK-based
- Dedicated account manager and development team
- Transparent reporting with monthly performance metrics
- Scalable from startup to enterprise
How we work
- Step 1
Free consultation
A 30-minute call to understand the problem. You keep the written summary either way.
- Step 2
Proposal
Scope, timeline and a fixed price, in writing, before anything starts.
- Step 3
Build
Short cycles with regular check-ins, so you see progress rather than hear about it.
- Step 4
Launch and support
We handle the go-live and stay available afterwards.
Other services in Belfast
Looking for the full picture? See our Haystack Development services, everything we do in Belfast or browse everything we do.
Haystack Development in Belfast — common questions
- Why evaluate components separately?
- Because an end-to-end score tells you the system is worse without telling you where. If the retriever never returned the relevant passage, no prompt change will help — and teams routinely spend weeks on prompts when the answer was never in the context.
- Is keyword search still useful?
- For exact terms, very. Part numbers, case references, names and codes are matched precisely by keyword search and approximately by embeddings, so systems handling that kind of query benefit from running both rather than choosing.
- Do rankers earn their cost?
- Frequently, and it should be measured rather than assumed. Reranking adds latency and expense, and whether it improves your results depends on your corpus and query patterns — which is exactly the sort of thing a component-level evaluation answers.
- How much does preprocessing matter?
- More than most of the pipeline. Text extracted badly from a PDF, tables flattened into unreadable rows and headers lost from their sections limit everything downstream, and no amount of retrieval sophistication recovers information the ingestion discarded.
- Do you work with businesses across County Antrim?
- Yes. We are based in Leicester, United Kingdom and work with clients throughout Northern Ireland, including Belfast and the surrounding County Antrim area. Most collaboration happens remotely, and we travel for kick-offs and key milestones.
- What kind of Belfast businesses do you usually work with?
- Fintech and security-accredited systems, plus trading platforms that handle the specific customs position on goods. Beyond that we work across Fintech, Cyber Security, Film & Media, Manufacturing and Higher Education.
- Do you cover the areas around Belfast?
- Yes — we work throughout Northern Ireland, including Lisburn, Bangor, Newry. Belfast is an urban area of roughly 345,000+, and we take on work across the wider County Antrim region rather than the city boundary alone.
Talk to us about Haystack Development in Belfast
A 30-minute call with someone who would actually work on it. No sales script, no obligation.
- Projects typically launched within 4–8 weeks
- No long-term contracts required
- All team members UK-based
- Dedicated account manager and development team
- Transparent reporting with monthly performance metrics
- Scalable from startup to enterprise