Zvec

Zvec is a lightweight, in-process vector database meant to be embedded into applications ("SQLite for vectors").

Quick navigation

• Overview: references/overview.md
• Concepts: references/concepts.md
• Quickstart (first operations): references/quickstart.md
• Installation (only if needed): references/installation.md
• Index types & quantization: references/indexing.md
• Embedding pipelines: references/embedding.md
• Reranking pipelines: references/reranker.md
• Data modeling & collections: references/collections.md
• CRUD / search operations: references/data-operations.md
• Configuration & persistence: references/configuration.md

Operator recipes (high signal)

• Minimal “embed Zvec” checklist

  • (Optional) Configure globals once at startup via zvec.init(...) (logging, query_threads).
  • Create a collection on disk with create_and_open(path=..., schema=..., option=...).
  • Ingest documents as Doc(id=..., fields=..., vectors=...) via insert() or upsert().
  • Query via collection.query(vectors=VectorQuery(...), topk=...).
  • Call collection.optimize() periodically after heavy ingestion.

• Bulk ingest + keep query latency stable

  • Prefer batched insert() / upsert().
  • Monitor collection.stats and run optimize() when flat buffers grow.

• Hybrid retrieval patterns

  • Filter-only: collection.query(filter=..., topk=...).
  • Vector + filter: pass both vectors=... and filter=....
  • Multi-vector fusion: pass multiple VectorQuery items and rerank using WeightedReRanker or RRF.

• Memory-sensitive ANN on x86_64

  • Prefer HNSW-RaBitQ when HNSW-quality recall matters but memory is the limiting factor.
  • Start with the documented defaults (total_bits=7, num_clusters=16) and tune query-time ef before changing quantization bits.

• Safe evolution of live collections

  • Add/drop/alter scalar columns via add_column(), drop_column(), alter_column().
  • Manage indexes via create_index() / drop_index() (scalar). Vector indexes cannot be dropped.

Critical prohibitions

• Do not mirror vendor docs verbatim; summarize in your own words.
• Do not assume a client/server deployment model: Zvec is in-process.
• Do not add project-specific paths, secrets, or environment assumptions.
• Do not choose HNSW-RaBitQ on unsupported hardware; current docs limit it to x86_64 with AVX2 or better.

Release Highlights (0.3.0 -> 0.3.1)

• Windows support and official Windows packages for Python and Node.js
• HNSW-RaBitQ quantized vector indexing for lower-memory ANN on supported x86_64 hosts
• Stable C API for building or maintaining additional language bindings
• MCP server / agent skills ecosystem for AI-driven collection management and retrieval workflows
• 0.3.1 hotfixes for relaxed collection path restrictions and better Windows cross-drive/path handling

Links

• Documentation: https://zvec.org/en/docs/
• GitHub: https://github.com/alibaba/zvec
• Releases: https://github.com/alibaba/zvec/releases
• Issues: https://github.com/alibaba/zvec/issues