Hexabot pgvector Helper

hexabot-helper-pgvector adds semantic Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to Hexabot v3, backed by embeddings stored in PostgreSQL via the pgvector extension. The helper is installed as a standard npm package and is discovered by the API automatically.

This is an optional extension. Install it only when you run Hexabot on PostgreSQL and want embedding-based semantic retrieval. Without it, Hexabot falls back to the built-in lexical fulltext-search helper.

Installation

Install the package in the same workspace or deployment that runs @hexabot-ai/api:

npm add hexabot-helper-pgvector

Restart the API after installation. The helper is picked up by the dynamic-provider loader (node_modules/hexabot-helper-*/**/*.helper.js) and appears with the name pgvector, exposing a pgvector settings group. No manual registration is required.

Prerequisites

Before configuring the helper, make sure you have:

• a Hexabot deployment running @hexabot-ai/api v3.4.0 or later;
• a PostgreSQL database with the vector extension available. The official pgvector/pgvector Docker image ships it preinstalled. The helper is a no-op on SQLite — isAvailable() returns false;
• an embedding provider reachable from the API (OpenAI or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint), and a Hexabot credential holding its API key.

What It Does

• Creates and self-heals its own schema on PostgreSQL — rag_pgvector_documents, rag_pgvector_chunks, rag_pgvector_jobs, an enqueue trigger, and the vector extension. See src/pgvector.provisioning.ts. Provisioning happens lazily at runtime (PgvectorStore.assertInfrastructure), so no core database migration is needed.
• Runs a durable, trigger-backed indexing queue that embeds content and answers retrieval queries via cosine similarity.
• On first bootstrap it performs a one-time migration of any legacy rag_settings (pre-v3.4.0 embedding configuration) into the pgvector settings group, converts a legacy embedding API key into a credential, and — when the legacy RAG was enabled in embedding mode — selects pgvector as the default RAG helper. The legacy rag_settings group is removed afterwards, making this a one-shot, idempotent step.

Configuration

Configure the helper from the Hexabot admin UI under the pgvector settings group:

• embedding provider, model, credential, base URL and dimensions;
• the chunking parameters used when indexing content.

Select it as the active RAG helper by setting global_settings:default_rag_helper to pgvector.

Development

npm install
npm run lint         # eslint
npm run typecheck    # tsc --noEmit
npm test             # unit tests
npm run build        # tsc -> dist/

The real-PostgreSQL integration suite in src/pgvector.integration.spec.ts is skipped unless TEST_PGVECTOR_DATABASE_URL is set:

docker run --rm -d -p 5432:5432 \
  -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres -e POSTGRES_DB=hexabot_test \
  pgvector/pgvector:pg17

TEST_PGVECTOR_DATABASE_URL=postgres://postgres:postgres@127.0.0.1:5432/hexabot_test \
  npm test

Release

Publishing is handled by the Publish NPM Package GitHub Actions workflow, which runs on pushes to main and on v* tags. It publishes only when the version in package.json is not already on npm, tagging pre-release versions as next and everything else as latest. The workflow needs an NPM_TOKEN repository secret.

To cut a release:

npm run release:patch   # or release:minor

License

This extension is licensed under the Fair Core License (FCL-1.0-ALv2). See LICENSE.md.