Rebuild Index (Vector / Elasticsearch)

This is part of RAG & Knowledge Base Operations — read the hub for the shared framework (permissions, monitoring, dry run, safety, resilience). This runbook covers the REBUILD_INDEX specifics.

Overview

Rebuild Index re-creates a company's search index(es) from existing data — the vector (Qdrant) collection and/or the Elasticsearch full-text index — without re-ingesting source files and without re-embedding.

Use it to:

• Recover from index corruption or vector/keyword inconsistency.
• Apply new index settings / mappings.
• Re-create an index after an infrastructure change.

Rebuild Index does not change the embedding model — the Qdrant rebuild copies the existing vectors. For a model/dimension change use Re-embedding; to change shard count use Re-sharding.

Targets

Phases

• QDRANT / BOTH:qdrant:copying → qdrant:verifying → qdrant:swapping
• ELASTICSEARCH / BOTH:elasticsearch:rebuilding → elasticsearch:verifying

(For BOTH, the Elasticsearch step indexes from the post-swap live collection.)

Prerequisites

• Choose thetarget (QDRANT, ELASTICSEARCH, or BOTH).
• Vector-DB capacity for a second collection during the Qdrant rebuild (QDRANT / BOTH).
• Dry run first.
• Permissions, monitoring, lock, and resilience: see the hub.

Run it

Dry run (preview):

mutation {
  createMaintenanceJob(input: {
    operationType: "REBUILD_INDEX"
    target: "BOTH"
    dryRun: true
  }) { id status }
}

Execute:

mutation {
  createMaintenanceJob(input: {
    operationType: "REBUILD_INDEX"
    target: "BOTH"
    destructive: false
    dryRun: false
  }) { id status createdAt }
}

Monitor

phase reflects the active sub-step (e.g. qdrant:copying, elasticsearch:rebuilding); processed / total track items rebuilt. See the hub for the maintenanceJob query, statuses, and cancelMaintenanceJob.

Safety & rollback

• Non-destructive by default — the live index keeps serving until the atomic swap (Qdrant) / verified re-index (Elasticsearch).
• Vectors and chunks are rebuilt from existing data (no model change), so results are equivalent after the rebuild.
• For BOTH, Qdrant is rebuilt and swapped before Elasticsearch re-indexes, so the keyword index is rebuilt against the new live collection.

Troubleshooting