1cc8a2b378
Viktor asked to enhance the memory system with 'semantics' — remember concepts (not just tokens) linked in a graph — and to prove, by benchmarking against the current system, that it actually improves recall. A multi-phase research workflow (18 agents) did landscape research, an adversarially-reviewed integration design, a stratified eval set over the real 5,452-memory corpus, and a head-to-head prototype-vs-current benchmark. Result: hybrid (lexical FTS + dense embeddings, RRF-fused) beats FTS on every overall metric, driven by a robust paraphrase win (recall@10 +0.350). Recommend adopting lexical+dense; the concept graph is DEFERRED. Post-run adversarial review correction (applied to all docs before commit): the prototype's fusion config structurally barred the graph leg from the ranked top-k, so the 'graph contributes nothing' ablation was a math artifact, NOT an empirical result — the graph is UNEVALUATED, not disproven (deferred on cost+uncertainty). Multi-hop deltas are not statistically significant. Glossary in CONTEXT.md; framing in ADR-0001-0003; findings in ADR-0004-0006 + docs/research/. Privacy: the corpus/queries/qrels/results are the user's real memories and stay gitignored (data/, cache/, results/, build_eval_set.py); only harness code, aggregate numbers, and synthetic examples are committed. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
49 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
49 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
# Production vector storage: pgvector HNSW + halfvec(1024); 1024-d embeddings (Voyage-3.5 / bge-large)
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Phase 1 of the hybrid ([ADR-0004](0004-phase-the-hybrid-lexical-dense-first-graph-gated.md)) needs a
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production home for the dense embeddings. Per [ADR-0002](0002-api-postgres-first-sqlite-stays-lexical.md)
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that is **pgvector on the shared CNPG Postgres**, where claude-memory is already a database tenant — no new
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datastore.
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> ⚠️ **Correction (verified against live infra by a design challenger):** an earlier draft justified this
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> with "Immich already runs pgvector on the same cluster." That is **false** — Immich runs its **own**
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> Postgres, not the shared CNPG — so it is NOT evidence the shared cluster has the extension. **pgvector
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> must be explicitly enabled on CNPG** (extension install, and possibly a CNPG operand-image change) via
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> Terraform **before this can land**; do not assume it is already available.
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Decisions:
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- **Index: HNSW** (`USING hnsw (embedding halfvec_cosine_ops) WITH (m=16, ef_construction=64)`,
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query knob `hnsw.ef_search` set via `SET LOCAL` inside the recall txn under PgBouncer). Best
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speed-recall tradeoff, buildable on an empty table. **IVFFlat rejected** — it must be built *after*
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data exists (empty-table footgun) and has a lower recall ceiling.
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- **Type: `halfvec(1024)`** (fp16) — halves index size at ~no recall loss; 1024-d halfvec = 2048
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bytes/row → single-digit MB for the whole corpus.
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- **Dimension fixed at 1024**, chosen **once** (changing it later forces a full re-embed + HNSW
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rebuild). 1024 matches both the production model (Voyage-3.5) and the prototype model
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(bge-large-en-v1.5), so the column and all fusion code are identical regardless of model.
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- **Model: Voyage-3.5** (1024-d, hosted) for **non-sensitive** memories (highest measured retrieval
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quality of the hosted options, free tier covers the corpus); **bge-large-en-v1.5** (1024-d, local,
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MIT) for **sensitive memories and the no-API-key fallback** ([ADR-0003](0003-external-embedding-apis-allowed-for-non-sensitive-memories.md)).
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`is_sensitive=1` rows are never embedded externally — `embedding=NULL`, lexical-only.
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- **pgvectorscale / StreamingDiskANN deferred** — Rust/pgrx must be compiled into the CNPG operand
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image, and it only earns its keep above ~1–5M vectors; our corpus is orders of magnitude below that.
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## Migration shape
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A single **additive** Alembic migration: `ALTER TABLE memories ADD COLUMN embedding halfvec(1024)`
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(NULL for sensitive) + `CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY … USING hnsw …`. The existing generated
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`search_vector tsvector` + GIN index (`migrations/001`) are **untouched**, so lexical behaviour and
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the SQLite-only degrade path are unchanged. pgvector enablement on CNPG and any extension/operand
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change land as **Terraform/Terragrunt** in `infra/stacks/…` (GitOps, never kubectl) and trigger a
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rolling restart of the shared cluster — coordinate accordingly.
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## Consequences
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- The prototype's in-process numpy matrix maps directly to this column; only the substrate changes,
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not the retrieval math.
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- The prototype measured **bge-large** quality; a cheap follow-up should re-run the dense leg with
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**Voyage-3.5** on the non-sensitive corpus to confirm the hosted ceiling holds on our content
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before locking the production default.
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- Production latency/ANN-approximation/filtered-top-k behaviour are unmeasured in the prototype and
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must be validated post-migration (a stated benchmark limitation).
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