659ea11ac4
Cohere retired `embed-english-v2.0`, `embed-english-light-v2.0` and `embed-multilingual-v2.0` on April 4, 2026 ([deprecations](https://docs.cohere.com/docs/deprecations), which lists `embed-english-v3.0`, `embed-multilingual-v3.0` and `embed-v4.0` as the embedding alternatives). `CohereEmbeddingFunction` still defaulted to `embed-multilingual-v2.0`, so every call without an explicit `name` fails. The default is now `embed-multilingual-v3.0`, the multilingual v3 model, and the retired models are removed from the docstring and the Cohere integration page (the page also listed `embed-english-v2.0` as the default, which did not match the code). The docs example, its generated snippet, the docs test and the slow Cohere test use the new name. This changes the default vector size: `ndims()` returns 1024 for `embed-multilingual-v3.0`, where the old default gave 768. Tables created from a schema that uses `cohere.ndims()` get 1024-dimension vectors from now on. A table that already holds 768-dimension vectors from the retired model needs a re-embed with a current model, since the old model can no longer be called. The `ndims()` entries for the v2 names are left as they are. Test: `test_cohere_default_model_is_not_a_retired_v2_model` in `python/python/tests/test_embeddings.py` checks the default name and that `ndims()` is 1024. The repository's pytest session could not be run for this change (its `conftest.py` needs a newer native module than the released wheel); the body of that test was run against the released `lancedb` 0.40.0 with this version of `cohere.py` in place, where it passes, and it returns `embed-multilingual-v2.0` / 768 without the change. ruff check and format are clean on the touched Python files. No Cohere request was made. This change was made with Claude Code. 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) --------- Co-authored-by: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Co-authored-by: Xuanwo <github@xuanwo.io>
LanceDB Documentation
LanceDB docs are available at docs.lancedb.com.
The SDK docs are built and deployed automatically by Github Actions
whenever a commit is pushed to the main branch. So it is possible for the docs to show
unreleased features.
Building the docs
Setup
- Install LanceDB Python. See setup in Python contributing guide.
Run
make developto install the Python package. - Install documentation dependencies. From LanceDB repo root:
pip install -r docs/requirements.txt
Preview the docs
Run these commands from the LanceDB repository root. The subshell changes into
docs to load mkdocs.yml, while leaving your shell in the repository root.
(cd docs && PYTHONPATH=. mkdocs serve)
If you want to just generate the HTML files:
(cd docs && PYTHONPATH=. mkdocs build)
If successful, you should see a docs/site directory in the repository root that
you can verify locally.
Adding examples
To make sure examples are correct, we put examples in test files so they can be run as part of our test suites.
You can see the tests are at:
- Python:
python/python/tests/docs - Typescript:
nodejs/examples/
Checking python examples
cd python
pytest -vv python/tests/docs
Checking typescript examples
The examples depend on @lancedb/lancedb at file:../dist, so the package must be
built before running the tests. This uses pnpm; see the
Typescript contributing guide for the toolchain setup.
pushd nodejs
pnpm install
pnpm build
popd
Then you can run the examples by going to the nodejs/examples directory, which is a
separate pnpm package with its own lockfile:
pushd nodejs/examples
pnpm install
pnpm test
popd
API documentation
Python
The Python API documentation is organized based on the file docs/src/python/python.md.
We manually add entries there so we can control the organization of the reference page.
However, this means any new types must be manually added to the file. No additional
steps are needed to generate the API documentation.
Typescript
The typescript API documentation is generated from the typescript source code using typedoc.
When new APIs are added, you must manually re-run the typedoc command to update the API documentation. The new files should be checked into the repository.
pushd nodejs
# `pnpm docs` would invoke pnpm's built-in `docs` command, not the script.
pnpm run docs
popd