1.4.5 · Lesson 16 of 28
Vector store maintenance
Keep the retrieval index synchronized with the source of truth.
WHAT
Keep the retrieval index synchronized with the source of truth.
WHY
Stale vectors produce stale answers.
Patterns
#### Scheduled refresh
Scheduled job ↓ Detect changes ↓ Re-index
#### Event-driven refresh
Document change ↓ Event ↓ Processing ↓ New embedding ↓ Index update
#### Incremental update
Only changed documents/chunks are reprocessed.
EXAM TRAP
Rebuilding the entire vector index for every document change may be unnecessarily expensive.
Prefer incremental synchronization when appropriate.
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Key points
- Stale vectors produce stale answers.
Exam focus
Rebuilding the entire vector index for every document change may be unnecessarily expensive. Prefer incremental synchronization when appropriate.