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Command Line Interface

The haiku-rag CLI provides complete document management functionality.

Note

Global options (must be specified before the command):

  • --config - Specify custom configuration file
  • --version / -v - Show version and exit

Per-command options:

  • --db - Specify custom database path
  • -h - Show help for specific command

Example: 

haiku-rag --config /path/to/config.yaml list
haiku-rag --config /path/to/config.yaml list --db /path/to/custom.db
haiku-rag add -h

Document Management

List Documents

haiku-rag list

Filter documents by properties: 

# Filter by URI pattern
haiku-rag list --filter "uri LIKE '%arxiv%'"

# Filter by exact title
haiku-rag list --filter "title = 'My Document'"

# Combine multiple conditions
haiku-rag list --filter "uri LIKE '%.pdf' AND title LIKE '%paper%'"

Add Documents

From text: 

haiku-rag add "Your document content here"

# Attach metadata (repeat --meta for multiple entries)
haiku-rag add "Your document content here" --meta author=alice --meta topic=notes

From file or URL: 

haiku-rag add-src /path/to/document.pdf
haiku-rag add-src https://example.com/article.html

# Optionally set a human‑readable title stored in the DB schema
haiku-rag add-src /mnt/data/doc1.pdf --title "Q3 Financial Report"

# Optionally attach metadata (repeat --meta). Values use JSON parsing if possible:
# numbers, booleans, null, arrays/objects; otherwise kept as strings.
haiku-rag add-src /mnt/data/doc1.pdf --meta source=manual --meta page_count=12 --meta published=true

From directory (recursively adds all supported files): 

haiku-rag add-src /path/to/documents/

Note

When adding a directory, the same content filters configured for file monitoring are applied. This means ignore_patterns and include_patterns from your configuration will be used to filter which files are added.

Note

As you add documents to haiku.rag the database keeps growing. By default, LanceDB supports versioning of your data. Create/update operations are atomic‑feeling: if anything fails during chunking or embedding, the database rolls back to the pre‑operation snapshot using LanceDB table versioning. You can optimize and compact the database by running the vacuum command.

Get Document

haiku-rag get 3f4a...   # document ID

Delete Document

haiku-rag delete 3f4a...   # document ID
haiku-rag rm 3f4a...       # alias

Use this when you want to change things like the embedding model or chunk size for example.

Basic search: 

haiku-rag search "machine learning"

With options: 

haiku-rag search "python programming" --limit 10

With filters (filter by document properties): 

# Filter by URI pattern
haiku-rag search "neural networks" --filter "uri LIKE '%arxiv%'"

# Filter by exact title
haiku-rag search "transformers" --filter "title = 'Deep Learning Guide'"

# Combine multiple conditions
haiku-rag search "AI" --filter "uri LIKE '%.pdf' AND title LIKE '%paper%'"

Question Answering

Ask questions about your documents: 

haiku-rag ask "Who is the author of haiku.rag?"

Ask questions with citations showing source documents: 

haiku-rag ask "Who is the author of haiku.rag?" --cite

Use deep QA for complex questions (multi-agent decomposition): 

haiku-rag ask "What are the main features and architecture of haiku.rag?" --deep --cite

Show verbose output with deep QA: 

haiku-rag ask "What are the main features and architecture of haiku.rag?" --deep --verbose

The QA agent will search your documents for relevant information and provide a comprehensive answer. With --cite, responses include citations showing which documents were used. With --deep, the question is decomposed into sub-questions that are answered in parallel before synthesizing a final answer. With --verbose (only with --deep), you'll see the planning, searching, evaluation, and synthesis steps as they happen. When available, citations use the document title; otherwise they fall back to the URI.

Research

Run the multi-step research graph:

haiku-rag research "How does haiku.rag organize and query documents?"

With verbose output to see progress:

haiku-rag research "How does haiku.rag organize and query documents?" --verbose

Flags: - --verbose: Show planning, searching previews, evaluation summary, and stop reason

Research parameters like max_iterations, confidence_threshold, and max_concurrency are configured in your configuration file under the research section.

When --verbose is set, the CLI consumes the research graph's AG-UI event stream, displaying step events and activity snapshots as agents progress through planning, search, evaluation, and synthesis. Without --verbose, only the final research report is displayed.

If you build your own integration, import stream_graph from haiku.rag.graph.agui to access AG-UI events (STEP_STARTED, ACTIVITY_SNAPSHOT, STATE_SNAPSHOT, RUN_FINISHED, etc.) and render them however you like while the graph is running.

Server

Start services (requires at least one flag): 

# MCP server only (HTTP transport)
haiku-rag serve --mcp

# MCP server (stdio transport)
haiku-rag serve --mcp --stdio

# File monitoring only
haiku-rag serve --monitor

# AG-UI server only
haiku-rag serve --agui

# Multiple services
haiku-rag serve --monitor --mcp
haiku-rag serve --monitor --agui
haiku-rag serve --mcp --agui

# All services
haiku-rag serve --monitor --mcp --agui

# Custom MCP port
haiku-rag serve --mcp --mcp-port 9000

See Server Mode for details on available services.

Settings

View current configuration settings: 

haiku-rag settings

Database Management

Initialize Database

Create a new database:

haiku-rag init [--db /path/to/your.lancedb]

This creates the database with the configured settings. All other commands require an existing database - they will fail with an informative error if the database doesn't exist.

Info

Display database metadata:

haiku-rag info [--db /path/to/your.lancedb]

Shows: - path to the database - stored haiku.rag version (from settings) - embeddings provider/model and vector dimension - number of documents and chunks (with storage sizes) - vector index status (exists/not created, indexed/unindexed chunks) - table versions per table (documents, chunks)

At the end, a separate "Versions" section lists runtime package versions: - haiku.rag - lancedb - docling

Create Vector Index

Create a vector index on the chunks table for fast approximate nearest neighbor search:

haiku-rag create-index [--db /path/to/your.lancedb]

Requirements: - Minimum 256 chunks required for index creation (LanceDB training data requirement) - Creates an IVF_PQ index using the configured search.vector_index_metric (cosine/l2/dot)

When to use: - After ingesting documents (indexes are not created automatically) - After adding significant new data to rebuild the index - Use haiku-rag info to check index status and see how many chunks are indexed/unindexed

Search behavior: - Without index: Brute-force kNN search (exact nearest neighbors, slower for large datasets) - With index: Fast ANN (approximate nearest neighbors) using IVF_PQ - With stale index: LanceDB combines indexed results (fast ANN) + brute-force kNN on unindexed rows - Performance degrades as more unindexed data accumulates

Vacuum (Optimize and Cleanup)

Reduce disk usage by optimizing and pruning old table versions across all tables:

haiku-rag vacuum

Automatic Cleanup: Vacuum runs automatically in the background after document operations. By default, it removes versions older than 1 day (configurable via storage.vacuum_retention_seconds), preserving recent versions for concurrent connections. Manual vacuum can be useful for cleanup after bulk operations or to free disk space immediately.

Rebuild Database

Rebuild the database by re-indexing documents. Useful when switching embeddings provider/model or changing chunking settings:

# Full rebuild (default) - re-converts from source files, re-chunks, re-embeds
haiku-rag rebuild

# Re-chunk from stored content (no source file access)
haiku-rag rebuild --rechunk

# Only regenerate embeddings (fastest, keeps existing chunks)
haiku-rag rebuild --embed-only

Rebuild modes:

Mode Flag Use case
Full (default) Changed converter, source files updated
Rechunk --rechunk Changed chunking strategy or chunk size
Embed only --embed-only Changed embedding model or vector dimensions

Download Models

Download required runtime models:

haiku-rag download-models

This command: - Downloads Docling OCR/conversion models (no-op if already present). - Pulls Ollama models referenced in your configuration (embeddings, QA, research, rerank).