Weaviate

Weaviate is an open-source, cloud-native vector database that stores both objects and vectors, enabling semantic search at scale. It combines vector similarity search with keyword filtering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and reranking in a single query interface. Common use cases include RAG systems, semantic and image search, recommendation engines, chatbots, and content classification.

Weaviate supports two approaches to store vectors: automatic vectorization at import using integrated models (OpenAI, Cohere, HuggingFace, and others) or direct import of pre-computed vector embeddings. Production deployments benefit from built-in multi-tenancy, replication, RBAC authorization, and many other features.

To get started quickly, have a look at one of these tutorials:

• Quickstart - Weaviate Cloud
• Quickstart - local Docker instance

Installation

Weaviate offers multiple installation and deployment options:

• Docker
• Kubernetes
• Weaviate Cloud

See the installation docs for more deployment options, such as AWS and GCP.

Getting started

You can easily start Weaviate and a local vector embedding model with Docker. Create a docker-compose.yml file:

services:
  weaviate:
    image: cr.weaviate.io/semitechnologies/weaviate:1.36.0
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
      - "50051:50051"
    environment:
      ENABLE_MODULES: text2vec-model2vec
      MODEL2VEC_INFERENCE_API: http://text2vec-model2vec:8080

  # A lightweight embedding model that will generate vectors from objects during import
  text2vec-model2vec:
    image: cr.weaviate.io/semitechnologies/model2vec-inference:minishlab-potion-base-32M

Start Weaviate and the embedding service with:

docker compose up -d

Install the Python client (or use another client library):

pip install -U weaviate-client

The following Python example shows how easy it is to populate a Weaviate database with data, create vector embeddings and perform semantic search:

import weaviate
from weaviate.classes.config import Configure, DataType, Property

# Connect to Weaviate
client = weaviate.connect_to_local()

# Create a collection
client.collections.create(
    name="Article",
    properties=[Property(name="content", data_type=DataType.TEXT)],
    vector_config=Configure.Vectors.text2vec_model2vec(),  # Use a vectorizer to generate embeddings during import
    # vector_config=Configure.Vectors.self_provided()  # If you want to import your own pre-generated embeddings
)

# Insert objects and generate embeddings
articles = client.collections.get("Article")
articles.data.insert_many(
    [
        {"content": "Vector databases enable semantic search"},
        {"content": "Machine learning models generate embeddings"},
        {"content": "Weaviate supports hybrid search capabilities"},
    ]
)

# Perform semantic search
results = articles.query.near_text(query="Search objects by meaning", limit=1)
print(results.objects[0])

client.close()

This example uses the Model2Vec vectorizer, but you can choose any other embedding model provider or bring your own pre-generated vectors.

Client libraries and APIs

Weaviate provides client libraries for several programming languages:

• Python
• JavaScript/TypeScript
• Java
• Go
• C#/.NET

There are also additional community-maintained libraries.

Weaviate exposes REST API, gRPC API, and GraphQL API to communicate with the database server.

Weaviate features

These features enable you to build AI-powered applications:

• ⚡ Fast Search Performance: Perform complex semantic searches over billions of vectors in milliseconds. Weaviate's architecture is built in Go for speed and reliability, ensuring your AI applications are highly responsive even under heavy load. See our ANN benchmarks for more info.

• 🔌 Flexible Vectorization: Seamlessly vectorize data at import time with integrated vectorizers from OpenAI, Cohere, HuggingFace, Google, and more. Or you can import your own vector embeddings.

• 🔍 Advanced Hybrid & Image Search: Combine the power of semantic search with traditional keyword (BM25) search, image search and advanced filtering to get the best results with a single API call.

• 🤖 Integrated RAG & Reranking: Go beyond simple retrieval with built-in generative search (RAG) and reranking capabilities. Power sophisticated Q&A systems, chatbots, and summarizers directly from your database without additional tooling.

• 📈 Production-Ready & Scalable: Weaviate is built for mission-critical applications. Go from rapid prototyping to production at scale with native support for horizontal scaling, multi-tenancy, replication, and fine-grained role-based access control (RBAC).

• 💰 Cost-Efficient Operations: Radically lower resource consumption and operational costs with built-in vector compression. Vector quantization and multi-vector encoding reduce memory usage with minimal impact on search performance.

• ⏱️ Object TTL: Automatically expire and remove stale data with configurable time-to-live settings per collection, with full RBAC and multi-tenancy support.

For a complete list of all functionalities, visit the official Weaviate documentation.

Useful resources

AI Agent Skills

Weaviate Agent Skills is a collection of skills for AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and others) that enable them to work with Weaviate more accurately and efficiently. Skills cover searching, querying, collection management, data import, and full application blueprints (RAG, agentic RAG, chatbots, and more).

Install with:

npx skills add weaviate/agent-skills

Demo projects & recipes

These demos are working applications that highlight some of Weaviate's capabilities. Their source code is available on GitHub.

• Elysia ([GitHub](https://gith