Is anyone using OpenAI's Assistant API?

Question

I find it kinda a lock-in strategy by OpenAI. You do RAG and function calling, etc. all using a convenient Assistant API (https://platform.openai.com/docs/assistants/overview).But I'm wondering if anyone has found it better than creating RAG pipelines manually by yourself. I like the idea of being able to switch from one API backend to another one without losing much functionality. But if you use OpenAI's assistants, it seems like there's no easy way to just "switch" to Mistral API for instance.

bob1029 · Accepted Answer

I started using it but I wrote my own using raw token prediction after getting the gist.
Assistant API feels like training wheels right now.
Even function calling seems essential on the surface, but you definitely don't need to use their approach. It's just more raw token prediction at the end of the day.