AI Document Assistant Architecture Template
Upload PDFs, extract embeddings, and query documents with AI. Generate a complete cloud architecture with cost estimates, Terraform, sequence diagrams, CLI deployment workflows, and a GitHub Actions pipeline — on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
Production estimates. Your workspace generates actuals.
Architecture Overview
Queues uploaded PDFs for async text extraction, generates embeddings, indexes them for semantic search, and exposes a REST API to query documents in natural language with per-user access controls.
~14
cloud services
AWS Architecture Diagram
Full topology with all services and request flows — switch providers above to compare.
AI Document Assistant - AWS - Production implementation lanes - CloudDesign AI
Architecture Breakdown
Every major component, what it does, and the AWS service powering it.
API Gateway
Amazon API Gateway
Routes, authenticates, and rate-limits incoming requests.
Upload API
Amazon API Gateway
Routes, authenticates, and rate-limits incoming requests.
Document Store
Amazon S3
Stores and retrieves data with durability and access controls.
Blob Event Trigger
Amazon EventBridge
Handles business logic and integrates with surrounding services.
Extraction Queue
Amazon SQS
Decouples producers from consumers for async processing.
Extraction Worker
Amazon SQS
Handles business logic and integrates with surrounding services.
Text Extraction
Amazon SQS
Handles business logic and integrates with surrounding services.
Chunking Queue
Amazon SQS
Decouples producers from consumers for async processing.
Embedding Worker
AWS Lambda
Handles business logic and integrates with surrounding services.
Embedding Model
AWS Lambda
Handles business logic and integrates with surrounding services.
Vector Search
Amazon OpenSearch Service
Indexes and retrieves content with full-text and vector search.
Query API
Amazon API Gateway
Routes, authenticates, and rate-limits incoming requests.
Chat Model
Amazon Bedrock
Handles business logic and integrates with surrounding services.
Metadata Store
Amazon DynamoDB
Stores and retrieves data with durability and access controls.
Cost Estimate — AWS
Representative production estimate. Your workspace generates a breakdown based on your actual configuration.
AWS — $200 / month estimated
S3
Document storage
SQS
Processing queue
Lambda
Extraction & query
Textract
OCR per page
Bedrock
Embedding & inference
OpenSearch
Vector index
DynamoDB
Usage tracking
API Gateway
REST API
Total estimate
$200 / month
What CloudDesign AI Generates
Every generation produces a complete set of production-ready artifacts.
Architecture Diagram
Full topology showing every service and how traffic flows between them.
Sequence Diagrams
Request lifecycle flows for upload, query, and overall system paths.
Cost Analysis
Per-service cost breakdown with total estimate for the selected provider.
Terraform Code
Complete infrastructure-as-code export you can deploy immediately.
CLI Deployment Workflow
Ordered provisioning commands for every service in the architecture.
GitHub Actions Pipeline
Ready-to-commit `.github/workflows/terraform.yml` for CI/CD.
Tradeoff Analysis
Cost, scalability, reliability, and operational complexity breakdown.
Production Checklist
Architecture-specific risks and mitigations before you go live.
Terraform Preview — AWS
Provider-specific infrastructure code. The full export is available after generating.
resource "aws_s3_bucket" "documents" {
bucket = "${var.prefix}-documents"
force_destroy = false
}
resource "aws_sqs_queue" "ingestion" {
name = "${var.prefix}-ingestion"
visibility_timeout_seconds = 300
}
resource "aws_opensearch_domain" "vectors" {
domain_name = "${var.prefix}-vectors"
engine_version = "OpenSearch_2.11"
}
# + 280 more lines — generate the full export →Full Terraform export includes: variables, outputs, IAM roles, environment configs, and module structure.
Generate Full TerraformCLI Preview — AWS
Ordered provisioning commands for every service. The full workflow is generated in your workspace.
aws s3api create-bucket --bucket $PREFIX-documents --region $REGION
aws sqs create-queue --queue-name $PREFIX-ingestion \
--attributes VisibilityTimeout=300
aws opensearch create-domain --domain-name $PREFIX-vectors \
--engine-version OpenSearch_2.11
aws lambda create-function --function-name $PREFIX-extractor \
--runtime python3.12 --handler handler.main
# + 22 more commands — generate the full workflow →Full CLI workflow includes: bucket creation, networking, IAM setup, application deployment, and health checks — in order.
Generate Full CLI WorkflowCloud Provider Mapping
Every architectural function mapped to its native service on AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Architecture Tradeoffs
How AWS, Azure, and GCP compare across the dimensions that matter most for this architecture.
Cost Efficiency
AWS and GCP offer competitive OCR pricing; Azure Document Intelligence costs more per page at scale.
Scalability
All providers scale well; GCP Vertex AI Search and AWS OpenSearch both handle billions of vectors.
AI/ML Ecosystem
Azure OpenAI has the tightest GPT integration; Bedrock and Vertex AI both support multiple model families.
Operational Simplicity
GCP and Azure managed services require less cluster management than self-managed OpenSearch.
Security & Compliance
AWS and Azure have broader compliance certification portfolios for regulated industries.
Production Risks for This Architecture
Known failure modes with concrete mitigations — included in every generated checklist.
Lambda timeout on large PDFs: documents over 50MB with dense text can exceed 15-minute execution limits — split into page-chunked jobs via SQS
Embedding cost runaway: generating embeddings for every page of every upload at scale costs more than expected — implement deduplication by content hash before embedding
RAG accuracy degrades on scanned PDFs with poor OCR quality — add a confidence threshold on Textract output and flag low-confidence documents for user review
Key Capabilities Covered
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about this architecture and what CloudDesign AI generates.
Generate the AI Document Assistant Architecture
Get the full architecture diagram, cost breakdown, Terraform, CLI workflow, and GitHub Actions pipeline — specific to your chosen cloud provider.
Free account · No credit card required · 5 architecture runs per month