> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://veryfront.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Pinecone

> Manage Pinecone vector database indexes and query or upsert vectors

## At a glance

* **Availability**: Experimental ([how to enable](/cloud/integrations)).
* **Auth**: API key.
* **Connection**: The key from `PINECONE_API_KEY` is sent as the `Api-Key` header.
* **Docs**: [https://docs.pinecone.io/reference/api/authentication](https://docs.pinecone.io/reference/api/authentication)

## Credentials

Set these per environment. See [Connect an integration](/cloud/integrations).

| Variable           | Required | Description                                                                                             |
| ------------------ | -------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `PINECONE_API_KEY` | Yes      | Pinecone API key (starts with pcsk\_) [Docs](https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/projects/manage-api-keys). |

## Setup

1. **Create a Pinecone account**: Sign up at [https://app.pinecone.io](https://app.pinecone.io) - the free Starter plan includes serverless indexes for testing.
2. **Create an API key**: In the Pinecone console, select your project, open API Keys, and create a key (pcsk\_...). Copy it immediately.
3. **Store the key**: Add it to your .env file as PINECONE\_API\_KEY=pcsk\_...
4. **Verify access**: Run the List Indexes tool. To read or write vectors, first run Describe Index and use the returned 'host' value as the indexHost parameter for Query Vectors / Upsert Vectors.

* Pinecone is two-step: control-plane tools (list/describe/create index) hit api.pinecone.io, while query/upsert hit the per-index host returned by Describe Index
* All requests send the X-Pinecone-API-Version header (default 2025-01)
* Embeddings must be generated separately (e.g. with OpenAI) - vectors you query or upsert must match the index dimension

Provider API reference: [https://docs.pinecone.io/reference/api/introduction](https://docs.pinecone.io/reference/api/introduction)

## Tools

| Tool           | Access | Description                                                                                        |
| -------------- | ------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| List Indexes   | Read   | List all indexes in the Pinecone project                                                           |
| Describe Index | Read   | Get an index's configuration and its data-plane host (needed for Query Vectors and Upsert Vectors) |
| Create Index   | Write  | Create a new serverless or pod-based index                                                         |
| Query Vectors  | Read   | Query an index for the nearest vectors (run Describe Index first to get the index host)            |
| Upsert Vectors | Write  | Write vectors into an index (run Describe Index first to get the index host)                       |

## Example prompts

* List my Pinecone indexes with their dimensions, metrics, and status.
* Describe my Pinecone index to get its host, then query it with an embedding vector and show the top matches with metadata.