How I Solved Cross-Environment Vector Database Schema Mismatches in a Dockerized AI Agent

Short summary

A developer encountered a KeyError '_type' in ChromaDB when moving a vector database from Windows/Python 3.13 to a Docker container running Linux/Python 3.11. The root cause was metadata serialization differences between hnswlib versions across platforms. The fix was to run the data ingestion script inside the Docker container itself, ensuring identical dependency versions for generation and consumption.

• •ChromaDB metadata serialized differently across Windows/Python 3.13 and Linux/Python 3.11
• •Attempting to downgrade hnswlib on Windows caused C++ build tool errors
• •Solution: run ingest.py inside the Docker container to guarantee schema parity

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