`MemoryConfig::quantized_index` now defaults to `true`. It holds a
quarter of the index memory and, with the exact re-score, is faster at
equal recall on every configuration measured: 1.63x the queries per
second on x86-64 (AVX2) and 1.18x on a Raspberry Pi 5 (NEON SDOT), with
builds 1.8x and 2.3x faster. The one argument for keeping it off — that
int8 search was slower on ARM — did not survive being measured.
Existing stores do not change. A store written with v2.6.0 or later
keeps its persisted setting. One written before the setting existed has
no stored value, and it loads as `false` rather than as the new default,
so reopening it never changes how its index is held. That case is
guarded by a real store written with the v2.5.0 CLI, committed as
`tests/fixtures/store_v2_5_0.h5` (6.8 KB): the test asserts it reopens
with an f32 index and still searches, and it fails if the load default
is changed to `true`.
The CLI needed more than a new default. `create --quantized-index`
assigned its value straight into the config, so under the new default
every CLI-created store would have been forced back to f32 unless the
caller knew to ask for int8. It is replaced by `--f32-index`, which only
ever switches the default off; `--quantized-index` is still accepted,
hidden, as a no-op, and the two conflict.
The whole agent suite passes under the new default, including the
brute-force recall oracle, now running on int8 plus re-score without
being asked to.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Graph degree and the build- and query-time candidate list sizes were
constants, so a deployment had no way to trade recall against memory or
query speed. They are now `MemoryConfig::hnsw_m`,
`hnsw_ef_construction` and `hnsw_ef_search`, persisted with the store
and defaulting to exactly the previous behaviour (16, 64, and a query
list that scales with `k`).
Two things the straightforward version would have got wrong:
`clawhdf5-ann` asserts a graph degree of at least 2, so a configured 0 —
from a file, or from a caller reading 0 as "use the default" — aborted
the process inside the index builder. The store clamps instead, and a
test covers it: removing the clamp makes that test panic rather than
fail.
`ef_search` and the candidate pool handed to score fusion were the same
number. Tying the pool to the new setting would mean lowering `ef` for
speed also narrows what fusion sees, quietly degrading hybrid results
through a knob that looks like it only costs time. They are now
independent.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
`MemoryConfig::quantized_index` stores the HNSW index's own copy of the
embeddings as i8 rather than f32. At 100k x 384 that takes the index from
266 to 123 MiB and the whole reopened store from 399 to 256 MiB — 2.72x
to 1.74x the raw vectors, the largest remaining item in the footprint.
Quantised distances are approximate and `ef` cannot compensate, because
the loss is in the distances rather than in the graph: recall@10 tops out
at 0.967 against f32's 0.9995 and does not move between ef=128 and
ef=256. The store already holds the exact embeddings, though, so when the
index is quantised the query path re-scores the candidate pool against
them before fusion. That restores recall (0.9940 vs 0.9945 at ef=64) and
costs about 13% of QPS.
Off by default: it trades query speed for memory and which side is worth
more depends on the deployment. The flag is persisted in `/meta`, so a
reopened store does not silently revert to four times the index memory,
and the sidecar graph is rehydrated into the configured storage.
Also on the CLI as `create --quantized-index`.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
- Add .gitea/workflows/ci.yml running scripts/ci-test.sh (fmt, clippy,
test, no_std check) on push/PR to main.
- Fix stale rustyhdf5-py/rustyhdf5-format package names in
ci-test.sh/check-nostd.sh, which had been silently no-op'ing those
checks (cargo warns but doesn't fail on an unknown --exclude/-p
target).
- With those checks actually running, fix the real issues they surface:
- clippy: useless_conversion in chunked_write.rs, byte_char_slices in
global_heap.rs/object_header.rs.
- cargo fmt: apply formatting across the workspace (whitespace only).
- no_std (thumbv7em-none-eabihf) build errors in clawhdf5-format:
core::sync::atomic::AtomicU64 doesn't exist on that target (no
native 64-bit atomics) — switch profiling.rs's counters to
portable-atomic, which falls back to a CAS-based emulation there
and is a no-op wrapper elsewhere. Add missing alloc imports for
Box (filters.rs), Vec (filters_szip.rs), and format! (dict_encoding.rs)
on no_std paths. Replace f64::powi (std/libm-only) with a small
local exponentiation-by-squaring helper in the scale-offset filter.
Resolves two gaps found in a project-state review:
1. Python build was broken: PyO3/numpy 0.23 caps at Python 3.13 but the
environment has 3.14. Bumped to 0.28 and updated the two breaking APIs
(PyObject -> Py<PyAny>, allow_threads -> detach). The extension module now
imports and round-trips under Python 3.14, unblocking cargo build --workspace.
2. The "HNSW vector search over agent memories" headline was unwired:
clawhdf5-ann had zero dependents and the agent used a linear cosine+BM25 scan.
- clawhdf5-ann is now a live index: insert, mark_deleted (soft delete with a
deleted bitset, traversed but never returned), compact, and a format
version tag (v2) with backward-compatible load of v1 files.
- clawhdf5-agent wires HNSW behind the `hnsw` feature (ON by default). The
index mirrors the cache (node id == cache index) and self-heals: it rebuilds
whenever hnsw_synced_len drifts from cache.len(), so unhooked pushes can't
desync it. Non-indexable stores (no/zero-dim/mixed embeddings) and queries
whose dim doesn't match fall back to the exact linear scan.
- hybrid.rs gains merge_vector_keyword, shared by the linear and HNSW paths.
- tests/hnsw_integration.rs validates recall vs a brute-force oracle plus
insert/delete/batch behaviour.
Disable HNSW for exact search with `--no-default-features --features float16`.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <[email protected]>
