Dictionary term
Vector Database
Also called vector store
AI FoundationsIntermediate
A vector database stores embeddings and lets you quickly find the items whose vectors are most similar to a query vector.
In plain English
A vector database stores text as meaning-numbers (embeddings) so you can quickly find the items most similar to a question.
Analogy
Like a librarian who shelves books by topic-similarity instead of alphabetically, so related books sit together for fast retrieval.
Why it matters
It is the storage layer behind RAG, enabling automations to pull the most relevant documents to feed Claude for grounded answers.
In practice
Storing all your help-center articles as vectors so a support bot can fetch the closest matches to a question.
Related terms
Sources
Browse all terms →Last verified