Vector Embedded Retrieval Archive

Searches, inspects, validates, converts, indexes, and exports VERA (.vera) document archives with citation-ready results. Use when answering questions from local documents, searching one archive or a document library, finding figures or page regions, checking archive integrity, converting PDFs, or operating vera-cli.

VERA

Use vera-cli to retrieve grounded evidence from .vera archives. Prefer the CLI's JSON output, read the returned text, and cite the source page and heading for every document-backed claim.

Before running commands

1. Check whether vera --help succeeds.
2. If the console script is unavailable, try python -m vera_cli --help.
3. If neither works, tell the user that vera-cli must be installed. Do not install packages unless the user has authorized environment changes.
4. Quote paths and queries according to the active shell.

Use vera in examples below. Substitute python -m vera_cli when necessary.

Read references/cli-reference.md before using commands beyond ordinary search or when exact JSON and exit-code behavior matters. Read references/retrieval-workflows.md for multi-step research, corpus, identifier, figure, and insufficient-evidence workflows.

Default search workflow

1. Identify the .vera file or directory and the question.

2. Run a high-recall first search:

   bash

   vera search "manual.vera" "stormwater detention requirements" --mode hybrid --top-k 5 --json
   

3. Check the process exit code. On success, parse stdout as one JSON object.

4. Read each result's text, page_start, page_end, heading_path, and source_filename. For directory searches, also retain each result's file.

5. If the evidence does not directly answer the question, refine the query or switch modes. Do not treat rank or score as proof.

6. Answer only from retrieved evidence and cite each substantive claim.

Search a directory as one corpus by passing the directory instead of a file:

bash

vera search "./library" "stormwater detention requirements" --top-k 5 --json

Use --recursive for a nested, unindexed directory. A fresh local index is used automatically when one exists; inspect the top-level index.used and index.reasons fields instead of assuming the index was active. Also inspect skipped_files: malformed archives are excluded from results and reported with their paths and validation reasons. For indexed semantic or hybrid searches, also inspect skipped_semantic_model_groups: unavailable or dimension-incompatible query embedders are omitted, so semantic coverage is incomplete even though keyword matches may still be returned. Collection indexes persist under .vera-index/ across process restarts. Status checks and library opens do not rebuild them; use index update explicitly after the source library changes.

Choose retrieval options

• Start with --mode hybrid.
• Use --mode keyword for exact phrases, identifiers, section numbers, table labels, and codes. Confirm that the exact token appears in returned text; punctuation and short hyphenated identifiers may be tokenized broadly.
• Use --mode semantic for paraphrases, intent, purpose, and wording mismatch.
• Add --context-chunks 1 when a hit depends on nearby definitions, exceptions, or preceding steps.
• Add --figures for figures, tables, charts, diagrams, maps, and captions.
• Add --regions only when page bounding boxes are needed for visual grounding.
• Increase --top-k to 10 for broad coverage; split compound questions into separate searches.

Citations and evidence

Format citations as:

• (source.pdf, p. 42, Chapter 4 > Detention Design)
• (source.pdf, pp. 42-43) when a result spans pages

For corpus results, preserve the source archive and source filename. When comparing archives, keep evidence and conclusions separated by source.

Treat evidence as strong when the text directly states the relevant definition, requirement, threshold, procedure, or exception under a relevant heading. Search again when a result only shares generic vocabulary, lacks the exact identifier, or conflicts with another result.

For figures, cite the caption and page. --figures returns metadata and captions, not image pixels. Do not claim to have visually inspected an image unless a separate vision-capable tool actually read it.

Inspect and validate

Use inspection when source identity or archive metadata matters:

bash

vera inspect "manual.vera" --json

Inspection includes default_embedding_normalization: l2, none, or unknown. Older archives without the field are reported as unknown.

Use validation when the user asks about archive integrity or a search failure suggests corruption:

bash

vera validate "manual.vera" --json

validate --json intentionally returns exit code 1 for an invalid archive while still printing a structured report. Read the report before concluding that no usable diagnostic exists.

Commands that write files

search, inspect, validate, and eval are read-only. The following commands write or replace local files and require normal user authorization:

• convert creates a validated .vera archive and publishes it atomically; image-based low-text pages use selective local OCR by default. Use --ocr off only when explicitly requested, or --ocr force when automatic detection misses a scan. English OCR is bundled; other languages require installed Tesseract language data.
• convert --overwrite replaces existing batch outputs.
• index build and index update write .vera-index/.
• export writes the embedded source document.

Never infer permission to convert, overwrite, index, update, or export from a request that only asks to search or explain a document.

Failure handling

• Always inspect the exit code before trusting output.
• Do not assume all nonzero exits lack JSON. validate, index status, eval, and a failed export can print useful JSON while returning 1.
• Most missing-path and runtime failures are unstructured tracebacks on stderr. Do not parse stderr as JSON.
• Directory conversion validates existing outputs before skipping them and exits 1 when malformed_existing is nonempty.
• vera mcp is a long-running stdio server and does not accept --json.
• If no direct answer is found, report the queries and modes tried and describe the closest evidence without inventing an answer.

Verification

Before responding, verify that:

• the command completed and its output was interpreted using its documented exit behavior;
• every document-backed claim has a source, page or page range, and heading when available;
• exact identifiers appear in the evidence;
• figure claims do not exceed the returned metadata;
• uncertainty and missing evidence are explicit.