the-biergarten-app/docs/pipeline

Biergarten Pipeline

A C++20 command-line pipeline that samples city records from local JSON, enriches each with Wikipedia context, and generates bilingual brewery names and descriptions via a local GGUF model or a deterministic mock.

This pipeline produces AI-generated data. It is not a source of truth for brewing techniques, cultural representation, or local-language accuracy. See ETHICS-AND-KNOWN-ISSUES.md for a full documentation of limitations, hallucination patterns, and bias.

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Table of Contents

• How It Fits The Main App
• Quick Start
  • Build
  • Model
  • Run
• Docker / RunPod
• Architecture
  • Pipeline Stages
  • Key Components
  • Runtime Behaviour
• Generated Output
• Tech Stack
• Tested Hardware
• Fixture Strategy
• Repo Layout
• Code Tour
• Next Steps

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How It Fits The Main App

The pipeline is a data ingestion layer. It sits outside the web app runtime and produces seed records the app imports at startup or during a dedicated seed step.

Planned app area	Pipeline contribution
Brewery discovery and management	Sampled city records, localized names, long-form descriptions
Beer reviews and ratings	Stable brewery fixtures with enough context to anchor review pages
Social follow relationships	Repeatable brewery entities for feeds, follows, and saved lists
Geospatial brewery experiences	Latitude, longitude, and country-level metadata

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Quick Start

Build

Requirements: C++20 compiler, CMake 3.31+, OpenSSL, Boost (JSON and ProgramOptions). SQLite is fetched from the upstream amalgamation, so no system SQLite package is required.

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build

CMake automatically detects whether a compatible llama.cpp installation is present on the system (libllama, libggml, libggml-base, and llama.h visible on the default search paths). If found, it links against those libraries and skips the FetchContent build. If not found, it fetches and builds llama.cpp from source at tag b9012. No additional flags are required in either case.

Metal is enabled automatically on Apple Silicon. CUDA or HIP/ROCm is detected automatically on Linux when the relevant toolkit is present.

Model

Skip this step if you only need --mocked.

mkdir -p models
curl -L \
  -o models/google_gemma-4-E4B-it-Q6_K.gguf \
  https://huggingface.co/bartowski/google_gemma-4-E4B-it-GGUF/resolve/main/google_gemma-4-E4B-it-Q6_K.gguf?download=true

Run

Run from build/ so the copied locations.json and prompts/ are available. Each run writes a fresh dated SQLite file such as biergarten_seed_2026-04-19T15-30-45.123456Z.sqlite into the working directory.

./biergarten-pipeline --mocked

./biergarten-pipeline \
  --model ../models/google_gemma-4-E4B-it-Q6_K.gguf \
  --prompt-dir prompts \
  --temperature 1.0 --top-p 0.95 --top-k 64 --n-ctx 8192 --seed -1

CLI Flags

Flag	Purpose
--mocked	Deterministic mock generator, no model required.
--model, -m	Path to a GGUF file. Required unless --mocked is set.
--prompt-dir	Directory containing prompt files (e.g. BREWERY_GENERATION.md). Required unless --mocked is set.
--output, -o	Directory for generated SQLite artifacts. Default: output.
--log-path	Path for application logs. Default: pipeline.log.
--temperature	Sampling temperature. Default: 1.0.
--top-p	Nucleus sampling. Default: 0.95.
--top-k	Top-k sampling. Default: 64.
--n-ctx	Context window size. Default: 8192.
--seed	Random seed. Default: -1 (random at runtime).
--help, -h	Print usage and exit.

--mocked and --model are mutually exclusive. Omitting both exits with an error before the pipeline starts. Sampling flags are ignored when --mocked is set.

The post-build step copies prompts/ into build/prompts/. Rebuild after editing any prompt file.

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Docker / RunPod

The tooling/pipeline/runpod/ directory contains a GPU-ready container configuration for running the pipeline on RunPod or any Docker host with an NVIDIA GPU.

How it works

The container uses a two-stage build. The first stage pulls prebuilt libllama, libggml, and backend plugin libraries (including libggml-cuda.so and the CPU variant plugins) from ghcr.io/ggml-org/llama.cpp:full-cuda. The second stage copies those libraries into /usr/local/lib and runs ldconfig so the dynamic linker and dlopen calls from ggml_backend_load_all() can resolve the CUDA backend plugin at runtime. llama.cpp headers are cloned at the matching tag and installed into /usr/local/include. CMake auto-detects both and skips the FetchContent source build entirely, keeping image build times short.

GGML_BACKEND_PATH is set to /usr/local/lib so llama.cpp knows where to scan for backend plugins.

Build the image

Run from the tooling/pipeline/ directory (the CMake project root), not from inside runpod/, so the COPY . . step picks up the full project context.

docker build -t biergarten-pipeline:latest -f runpod/Dockerfile .

To monitor the full build output and confirm CMake selects the system llama.cpp:

docker build \
  --progress=plain \
  --no-cache \
  -t biergarten-pipeline:latest \
  -f runpod/Dockerfile \
  . 2>&1 | tee build.log

Look for [biergarten] Found system llama.cpp — skipping FetchContent in the output to confirm the fast path was taken.

Run in mocked mode

No model or GPU required. Useful for validating the pipeline logic and SQLite export path.

docker run --rm \
  -e BIERGARTEN_MODE=mocked \
  -v "$PWD/output:/workspace/output" \
  -v "$PWD/logs:/workspace/logs" \
  biergarten-pipeline:latest

Run in live mode

Mount your GGUF model before starting. The container validates the model path before launching the binary.

docker run --rm \
  --runtime=nvidia \
  -e BIERGARTEN_MODE=live \
  -e GGML_BACKEND_PATH="/usr/local/lib/libggml-cuda.so" \
  -v "$PWD/models:/workspace/models" \
  -v "$PWD/output:/workspace/output" \
  -v "$PWD/logs:/workspace/logs" \
  biergarten-pipeline:latest

The model must be present at ./models/google_gemma-4-E4B-it-Q6_K.gguf on the host. See Model above for the download command.

RunPod deployment

Use a GPU pod template. Mount persistent storage for /workspace/models, /workspace/output, and /workspace/logs. Set BIERGARTEN_MODE=live in the template environment. See tooling/pipeline/runpod/pod-template.yaml for a starter template.

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Architecture

Pipeline Stages

Stage	Implementation
Load	JsonLoader::LoadLocations() reads locations.json into typed Location records.
Sample	BiergartenDataGenerator::QueryCitiesWithCountries() samples up to 50 locations per run.
Enrich	WikipediaService fetches city and beer context. Keeps going when a lookup fails.
Generate	MockGenerator or LlamaGenerator produces brewery names and descriptions in English and the local language.
Store	SqliteExportService writes each successful brewery into a fresh dated .sqlite database with normalized location and brewery tables.
Log	spdlog writes results and warnings to the console.

If enrichment or generation fails for a city, that city is skipped and the pipeline continues.

Key Components

• src/main.cc — argument parsing and Boost.DI composition root.
• JsonLoader — validates curated location input.
• WikipediaService — queries Wikipedia extracts, caches results, returns empty context on failure.
• LlamaGenerator — formats prompts for Gemma 4, validates JSON output, retries malformed responses up to three times. If output looks truncated, the retry raises the token budget before trying again.
• MockGenerator — stable hash-based output so the same city input always produces the same brewery.
• SqliteExportService — creates a dated SQLite file per run and persists each successful brewery into normalized tables.
• Brewery payloads include English and local-language name and description fields.

Runtime Behaviour

WikipediaService queries city, country, and beer-related Wikipedia extracts using its configured lookup, then caches the first successful response per query string. The fetched extract text is included in the prompt as context for generation.

GetLocationContext() returns an empty string when the web client is unavailable or when lookup/parsing fails.

LlamaGenerator validates model output as structured JSON. The retry path exists as a safety hatch for cases where the reasoning block consumes available token budget and compresses the JSON output space. All runs to date have produced valid output on the first pass; the path is kept for resilience.

MockGenerator uses stable hashes for repeatable output in demos and Storybook runs.

Process Flow - Activity Diagram

Architectural Overview - Class Diagram

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Generated Output

Each successful run stores a GeneratedBrewery pair with the source location and a BreweryResult payload. The same generated records are also written to a fresh SQLite export file named with the current UTC timestamp.

Field	Meaning
name_en	Brewery name in English.
description_en	Brewery description in English.
name_local	Brewery name in the local language.
description_local	Brewery description in the local language.

The log dump also includes city, country, state or province, ISO subdivision code, latitude, and longitude for each entry.

Consumer Data Shape

Field	Why it matters
city, state_province, country	Human-readable location labels and page headings
iso3166_1, iso3166_2	Filtering, regional grouping, locale matching
latitude, longitude	Map pins and nearby brewery views
local_languages	Locale-aware copy selection
name_en, description_en	Default English display content
name_local, description_local	Local-language display content
region_context	Richer copy for cards and detail pages

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Tech Stack

• C++20
• CMake 3.31+
• Boost.JSON, Boost.ProgramOptions, Boost.DI
• spdlog
• cpp-httplib (with OpenSSL)
• SQLite amalgamation fetched and compiled via CMake FetchContent
• llama.cpp (auto-detected from system install or fetched via FetchContent)
• Docker with NVIDIA CUDA 12.6 base image for GPU container builds
• RunPod for cloud GPU inference

The build fetches Boost.DI, spdlog, and SQLite via CMake. llama.cpp is fetched only when a system installation is not detected. Metal is enabled on Apple Silicon; CUDA or HIP/ROCm is detected on Linux when the toolkit is present.

Code Style: Modern C++20 throughout — RAII for ownership, std::unique_ptr for injected dependencies, std::optional for parse outcomes, std::span for read-only views over generated city data, structured bindings in pipeline loops. Formatting follows the Google C++ Style Guide via .clang-format with a narrow column limit and two-space indentation.

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Tested Hardware

ARM macOS — M1 Pro

Host	MacBook Pro 14" (2021)
CPU	Apple M1 Pro (8-core)
GPU	Apple M1 Pro (14-core integrated)
Memory	16 GB
Model	Gemma 4 E4B
Inference	llama.cpp with Metal

x86_64 Linux — NVIDIA RTX 2000

Host	ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 (Fedora 43)
CPU	Intel Core Ultra 7 155H
GPU	NVIDIA RTX 2000 Ada Generation
Memory	32 GB
Model	Gemma 4 E4B
Inference	llama.cpp with CUDA 12.x

x86_64 Linux — Docker / RunPod (NVIDIA CUDA)

Host	RunPod GPU pod
Base	nvidia/cuda:12.6.3-devel-ubuntu24.04
Model	Gemma 4 E4B Q6_K
Inference	llama.cpp prebuilt CUDA backends via dlopen

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Fixture Strategy

• --mocked for stable fixtures, repeatable screenshots, and Storybook runs.
• --model when geographically grounded content matters for demos.
• Keep locations.json structured enough to support discovery and future filtering.
• Treat SQLite output as seed material for the app's brewery domain, not production data.

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Repo Layout

Path	Purpose
includes/	Public headers and shared models.
src/	Implementation files.
locations.json	Curated city input copied into the build tree.
prompts/	System prompts used by the model-backed path.
diagrams/	Architecture and pipeline diagrams.
tooling/pipeline/runpod/	Dockerfile, launcher, and RunPod pod template.
ETHICS-AND-KNOWN-ISSUES.md	Ethics, bias, hallucination analysis, mitigations.

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Code Tour

• src/main.cc — argument parsing and DI composition root.
• src/biergarten_data_generator/ — orchestration, sampling, logging, and export.
• src/services/wikipedia/ — enrichment service and cache.
• src/services/sqlite/ — SQLite export implementation.
• src/data_generation/llama/ — local inference, prompt loading, output validation.
• src/data_generation/mock/ — deterministic fallback.
• tooling/pipeline/runpod/ — container build and runtime launcher.

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Next Steps

The pipeline currently produces city-aware brewery records and dated SQLite exports. The next passes add additional fixture types so the app can exercise the full brewery domain without live data.

Testing — Very High Priority

• Unit test JSON validation and retry logic against malformed, truncated, and empty model outputs.
• Integration test the enrichment pipeline with missing context, short context, and fake context inputs.
• Adversarial context tests: feed plausible but geographically incorrect Wikipedia extracts and verify the model does not silently blend them with training data.
• Verify bilingual enrichment behaviour when only an English extract is available versus when both extracts are present.
• Confirm the retry path is reachable when the reasoning block consumes available token budget.

Beer Generation

Generate catalog entries with style, ABV, IBU, color, aroma notes, and food pairing hints. Link beers back to breweries and cities. Keep style coverage wide enough to exercise search, sort, and category filters.

User Generation

Generate user profiles with stable names, bios, locale hints, and preference signals. Include stable IDs for downstream fixture joins. Keep output deterministic for screenshots while allowing larger randomized batches.

Check-In System

Produce timestamped check-in events between users and breweries. Use a J-curve activity profile — a small set of users accounts for most check-ins, the rest appear occasionally. Add bursty behaviour around weekends and travel periods.

Beer Ratings

Generate rating events with a strong positive skew and a long tail of lower scores. Avoid uniform distributions. Attach timestamps and user IDs so the app can compute averages, trends, and per-style comparisons.