Vector Database
Data/dictionary/vector-database
Definition
A database optimised for storing and searching embeddings — finding the K nearest vectors to a query vector. Examples: Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector. The retrieval engine in most RAG systems.
Posts that use this term
- Local RAG and embeddings
A complete local RAG pipeline in 30 lines: nomic-embed-text for embeddings, Chroma for the vector DB, Llama 3.2 for the chat model. Why local RAG often beats cloud RAG for personal knowledge bases.
- Prompt, RAG, fine-tune: three ways to shape a model
Three levers for shaping what an LLM does: prompting (ask better), RAG (give it the right context), fine-tuning (change the weights). What each costs, what each fixes, and how to pick.
- RAG: giving a model memory it doesn't have
RAG is the pattern of fetching relevant text from a search system and putting it in the LLM's context window before asking your question. Not magic, not fine-tuning — just better prompts.