File Ingestion

Upload any file format to your Vector Store and make it instantly searchable. Vector Stores automatically understand and process PDFs, images, documents, code, and more. Turning your unstructured data into intelligent search experiences.

Basic File Ingestion

Upload a single file to your Vector Store:

When you upload a file, Vector Stores automatically understand the content and make it searchable with natural language queries. The system handles all the complexity behind the scenes.

For complete details on the file object structure including all properties and status values, see Data Models.

Ingestion Options

File Types

Vector Stores understand any data format:

Documents: PDFs (including scanned), Word docs, text files, Markdown
Presentations: PowerPoint slides with images and text
Code: Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, C#
Images: Photos, diagrams, charts with OCR and visual understanding
Specialized: Pre-structured JSON/JSONL formats

Each file type is automatically processed to understand both text and visual content, preserving context and meaning.

For the complete list of supported formats and processing details, see Supported File Types.

Metadata

Enhance your files with structured metadata for better organization and filtering:

Metadata is structured information about your files that enables powerful filtering, organization, and search capabilities. It's inherited by all chunks created from the file, enabling precise filtering during search operations.

Supported Metadata Types:

String values: Categories, names, tags, status values
Numeric values: Scores, versions, counts, measurements
Boolean values: Flags, permissions, feature toggles
Date/time values: Timestamps, deadlines, publishing dates
Array values: Multiple values, collections, tags

For supported metadata types, see Supported Metadata Types.

Learn more about Metadata Filtering to search with metadata filtering.

Parsing Strategy

Control how your files are processed with parsing strategy options (see examples above):

Available Parsing Strategies:

fast (default): Optimized for speed, good quality for most documents
high_quality: Enhanced processing for complex layouts and formatting

Vector Store File Status

pending: File uploaded and queued for processing
in_progress: Active processing (extraction, chunking, embedding, indexing)
completed: Successfully processed and searchable
failed: Processing error (check last_error for details)
cancelled: Processing stopped manually or automatically