embedding-strategies
Select and optimize embedding models for semantic search and RAG applications. Use when choosing embedding models, implementing chunking strategies, or optimizing embedding quality for specific domains.
Install
npx skills add https://github.com/wshobson/agents/tree/main/plugins/llm-application-dev/skills/embedding-strategies
claude plugin marketplace add https://llmmart.ai/marketplace.json && claude plugin install wshobson-agents@llmmart
git clone https://github.com/wshobson/agents.git
The skills CLI installs just this skill, for any of its supported agents. Claude Code installs the whole wshobson/agents collection as a plugin from our marketplace. Git is the plain clone.
Skill manifest
Embedding Strategies
Guide to selecting and optimizing embedding models for vector search applications.
When to Use This Skill
- Choosing embedding models for RAG
- Optimizing chunking strategies
- Fine-tuning embeddings for domains
- Comparing embedding model performance
- Reducing embedding dimensions
- Handling multilingual content
Core Concepts
1. Embedding Model Comparison (2026)
| Model | Dimensions | Max Tokens | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| voyage-3-large | 1024 | 32000 | Claude apps (Anthropic recommended) |
| voyage-3 | 1024 | 32000 | Claude apps, cost-effective |
| voyage-code-3 | 1024 | 32000 | Code search |
| voyage-finance-2 | 1024 | 32000 | Financial documents |
| voyage-law-2 | 1024 | 32000 | Legal documents |
| text-embedding-3-large | 3072 | 8191 | OpenAI apps, high accuracy |
| text-embedding-3-small | 1536 | 8191 | OpenAI apps, cost-effective |
| bge-large-en-v1.5 | 1024 | 512 | Open source, local deployment |
| all-MiniLM-L6-v2 | 384 | 256 | Fast, lightweight |
| multilingual-e5-large | 1024 | 512 | Multi-language |
2. Embedding Pipeline
Document → Chunking → Preprocessing → Embedding Model → Vector
↓
[Overlap, Size] [Clean, Normalize] [API/Local]
Templates and detailed worked examples
Full template library and detailed worked examples live in references/details.md. Read that file when you need the concrete templates.
Best Practices
Do's
- Match model to use case: Code vs prose vs multilingual
- Chunk thoughtfully: Preserve semantic boundaries
- Normalize embeddings: For cosine similarity search
- Batch requests: More efficient than one-by-one
- Cache embeddings: Avoid recomputing for static content
- Use Voyage AI for Claude apps: Recommended by Anthropic
Don'ts
- Don't ignore token limits: Truncation loses information
- Don't mix embedding models: Incompatible vector spaces
- Don't skip preprocessing: Garbage in, garbage out
- Don't over-chunk: Lose important context
- Don't forget metadata: Essential for filtering and debugging
Files (agents)
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references
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details.md 16.4 KB
# embedding-strategies — templates and worked examples ## Templates ### Template 1: Voyage AI Embeddings (Recommended for Claude) ```python from langchain_voyageai import VoyageAIEmbeddings from typing import List import os # Initialize Voyage AI embeddings (recommended by Anthropic for Claude) embeddings = VoyageAIEmbeddings( model="voyage-3-large", voyage_api_key=os.environ.get("VOYAGE_API_KEY") ) def get_embeddings(texts: List[str]) -> List[List[float]]: """Get embeddings from Voyage AI.""" return embeddings.embed_documents(texts) def get_query_embedding(query: str) -> List[float]: """Get single query embedding.""" return embeddings.embed_query(query) # Specialized models for domains code_embeddings = VoyageAIEmbeddings(model="voyage-code-3") finance_embeddings = VoyageAIEmbeddings(model="voyage-finance-2") legal_embeddings = VoyageAIEmbeddings(model="voyage-law-2") ``` ### Template 2: OpenAI Embeddings ```python from openai import OpenAI from typing import List import numpy as np client = OpenAI() def get_embeddings( texts: List[str], model: str = "text-embedding-3-small", dimensions: int = None ) -> List[List[float]]: """Get embeddings from OpenAI with optional dimension reduction.""" # Handle batching for large lists batch_size = 100 all_embeddings = [] for i in range(0, len(texts), batch_size): batch = texts[i:i + batch_size] kwargs = {"input": batch, "model": model} if dimensions: # Matryoshka dimensionality reduction kwargs["dimensions"] = dimensions response = client.embeddings.create(**kwargs) embeddings = [item.embedding for item in response.data] all_embeddings.extend(embeddings) return all_embeddings def get_embedding(text: str, **kwargs) -> List[float]: """Get single embedding.""" return get_embeddings([text], **kwargs)[0] # Dimension reduction with Matryoshka embeddings def get_reduced_embedding(text: str, dimensions: int = 512) -> List[float]: """Get embedding with reduced dimensions (Matryoshka).""" return get_embedding( text, model="text-embedding-3-small", dimensions=dimensions ) ``` ### Template 3: Local Embeddings with Sentence Transformers ```python from sentence_transformers import SentenceTransformer from typing import List, Optional import numpy as np class LocalEmbedder: """Local embedding with sentence-transformers.""" def __init__( self, model_name: str = "BAAI/bge-large-en-v1.5", device: str = "cuda" ): self.model = SentenceTransformer(model_name, device=device) self.model_name = model_name def embed( self, texts: List[str], normalize: bool = True, show_progress: bool = False ) -> np.ndarray: """Embed texts with optional normalization.""" embeddings = self.model.encode( texts, normalize_embeddings=normalize, show_progress_bar=show_progress, convert_to_numpy=True ) return embeddings def embed_query(self, query: str) -> np.ndarray: """Embed a query with appropriate prefix for retrieval models.""" # BGE and similar models benefit from query prefix if "bge" in self.model_name.lower(): query = f"Represent this sentence for searching relevant passages: {query}" return self.embed([query])[0] def embed_documents(self, documents: List[str]) -> np.ndarray: """Embed documents for indexing.""" return self.embed(documents) # E5 model with instructions class E5Embedder: def __init__(self, model_name: str = "intfloat/multilingual-e5-large"): self.model = SentenceTransformer(model_name) def embed_query(self, query: str) -> np.ndarray: """E5 requires 'query:' prefix for queries.""" return self.model.encode(f"query: {query}") def embed_document(self, document: str) -> np.ndarray: """E5 requires 'passage:' prefix for documents.""" return self.model.encode(f"passage: {document}") ``` ### Template 4: Chunking Strategies ```python from typing import List, Tuple import re def chunk_by_tokens( text: str, chunk_size: int = 512, chunk_overlap: int = 50, tokenizer=None ) -> List[str]: """Chunk text by token count.""" import tiktoken tokenizer = tokenizer or tiktoken.get_encoding("cl100k_base") tokens = tokenizer.encode(text) chunks = [] start = 0 while start < len(tokens): end = start + chunk_size chunk_tokens = tokens[start:end] chunk_text = tokenizer.decode(chunk_tokens) chunks.append(chunk_text) start = end - chunk_overlap return chunks def chunk_by_sentences( text: str, max_chunk_size: int = 1000, min_chunk_size: int = 100 ) -> List[str]: """Chunk text by sentences, respecting size limits.""" import nltk sentences = nltk.sent_tokenize(text) chunks = [] current_chunk = [] current_size = 0 for sentence in sentences: sentence_size = len(sentence) if current_size + sentence_size > max_chunk_size and current_chunk: chunks.append(" ".join(current_chunk)) current_chunk = [] current_size = 0 current_chunk.append(sentence) current_size += sentence_size if current_chunk: chunks.append(" ".join(current_chunk)) return chunks def chunk_by_semantic_sections( text: str, headers_pattern: str = r'^#{1,3}\s+.+$' ) -> List[Tuple[str, str]]: """Chunk markdown by headers, preserving hierarchy.""" lines = text.split('\n') chunks = [] current_header = "" current_content = [] for line in lines: if re.match(headers_pattern, line, re.MULTILINE): if current_content: chunks.append((current_header, '\n'.join(current_content))) current_header = line current_content = [] else: current_content.append(line) if current_content: chunks.append((current_header, '\n'.join(current_content))) return chunks def recursive_character_splitter( text: str, chunk_size: int = 1000, chunk_overlap: int = 200, separators: List[str] = None ) -> List[str]: """LangChain-style recursive splitter.""" separators = separators or ["\n\n", "\n", ". ", " ", ""] def split_text(text: str, separators: List[str]) -> List[str]: if not text: return [] separator = separators[0] remaining_separators = separators[1:] if separator == "": # Character-level split return [text[i:i+chunk_size] for i in range(0, len(text), chunk_size - chunk_overlap)] splits = text.split(separator) chunks = [] current_chunk = [] current_length = 0 for split in splits: split_length = len(split) + len(separator) if current_length + split_length > chunk_size and current_chunk: chunk_text = separator.join(current_chunk) # Recursively split if still too large if len(chunk_text) > chunk_size and remaining_separators: chunks.extend(split_text(chunk_text, remaining_separators)) else: chunks.append(chunk_text) # Start new chunk with overlap overlap_splits = [] overlap_length = 0 for s in reversed(current_chunk): if overlap_length + len(s) <= chunk_overlap: overlap_splits.insert(0, s) overlap_length += len(s) else: break current_chunk = overlap_splits current_length = overlap_length current_chunk.append(split) current_length += split_length if current_chunk: chunks.append(separator.join(current_chunk)) return chunks return split_text(text, separators) ``` ### Template 5: Domain-Specific Embedding Pipeline ```python import re from typing import List, Optional from dataclasses import dataclass @dataclass class EmbeddedDocument: id: str document_id: str chunk_index: int text: str embedding: List[float] metadata: dict class DomainEmbeddingPipeline: """Pipeline for domain-specific embeddings.""" def __init__( self, embedding_model: str = "voyage-3-large", chunk_size: int = 512, chunk_overlap: int = 50, preprocessing_fn=None ): self.embeddings = VoyageAIEmbeddings(model=embedding_model) self.chunk_size = chunk_size self.chunk_overlap = chunk_overlap self.preprocess = preprocessing_fn or self._default_preprocess def _default_preprocess(self, text: str) -> str: """Default preprocessing.""" # Remove excessive whitespace text = re.sub(r'\s+', ' ', text) # Remove special characters (customize for your domain) text = re.sub(r'[^\w\s.,!?-]', '', text) return text.strip() async def process_documents( self, documents: List[dict], id_field: str = "id", content_field: str = "content", metadata_fields: Optional[List[str]] = None ) -> List[EmbeddedDocument]: """Process documents for vector storage.""" processed = [] for doc in documents: content = doc[content_field] doc_id = doc[id_field] # Preprocess cleaned = self.preprocess(content) # Chunk chunks = chunk_by_tokens( cleaned, self.chunk_size, self.chunk_overlap ) # Create embeddings embeddings = await self.embeddings.aembed_documents(chunks) # Create records for i, (chunk, embedding) in enumerate(zip(chunks, embeddings)): metadata = {"document_id": doc_id, "chunk_index": i} # Add specified metadata fields if metadata_fields: for field in metadata_fields: if field in doc: metadata[field] = doc[field] processed.append(EmbeddedDocument( id=f"{doc_id}_chunk_{i}", document_id=doc_id, chunk_index=i, text=chunk, embedding=embedding, metadata=metadata )) return processed # Code-specific pipeline class CodeEmbeddingPipeline: """Specialized pipeline for code embeddings.""" def __init__(self): # Use Voyage's code-specific model self.embeddings = VoyageAIEmbeddings(model="voyage-code-3") def chunk_code(self, code: str, language: str) -> List[dict]: """Chunk code by functions/classes using tree-sitter.""" try: import tree_sitter_languages parser = tree_sitter_languages.get_parser(language) tree = parser.parse(bytes(code, "utf8")) chunks = [] # Extract function and class definitions self._extract_nodes(tree.root_node, code, chunks) return chunks except ImportError: # Fallback to simple chunking return [{"text": code, "type": "module"}] def _extract_nodes(self, node, source_code: str, chunks: list): """Recursively extract function/class definitions.""" if node.type in ['function_definition', 'class_definition', 'method_definition']: text = source_code[node.start_byte:node.end_byte] chunks.append({ "text": text, "type": node.type, "name": self._get_name(node), "start_line": node.start_point[0], "end_line": node.end_point[0] }) for child in node.children: self._extract_nodes(child, source_code, chunks) def _get_name(self, node) -> str: """Extract name from function/class node.""" for child in node.children: if child.type == 'identifier' or child.type == 'name': return child.text.decode('utf8') return "unknown" async def embed_with_context( self, chunk: str, context: str = "" ) -> List[float]: """Embed code with surrounding context.""" if context: combined = f"Context: {context}\n\nCode:\n{chunk}" else: combined = chunk return await self.embeddings.aembed_query(combined) ``` ### Template 6: Embedding Quality Evaluation ```python import numpy as np from typing import List, Dict def evaluate_retrieval_quality( queries: List[str], relevant_docs: List[List[str]], # List of relevant doc IDs per query retrieved_docs: List[List[str]], # List of retrieved doc IDs per query k: int = 10 ) -> Dict[str, float]: """Evaluate embedding quality for retrieval.""" def precision_at_k(relevant: set, retrieved: List[str], k: int) -> float: retrieved_k = retrieved[:k] relevant_retrieved = len(set(retrieved_k) & relevant) return relevant_retrieved / k if k > 0 else 0 def recall_at_k(relevant: set, retrieved: List[str], k: int) -> float: retrieved_k = retrieved[:k] relevant_retrieved = len(set(retrieved_k) & relevant) return relevant_retrieved / len(relevant) if relevant else 0 def mrr(relevant: set, retrieved: List[str]) -> float: for i, doc in enumerate(retrieved): if doc in relevant: return 1 / (i + 1) return 0 def ndcg_at_k(relevant: set, retrieved: List[str], k: int) -> float: dcg = sum( 1 / np.log2(i + 2) if doc in relevant else 0 for i, doc in enumerate(retrieved[:k]) ) ideal_dcg = sum(1 / np.log2(i + 2) for i in range(min(len(relevant), k))) return dcg / ideal_dcg if ideal_dcg > 0 else 0 metrics = { f"precision@{k}": [], f"recall@{k}": [], "mrr": [], f"ndcg@{k}": [] } for relevant, retrieved in zip(relevant_docs, retrieved_docs): relevant_set = set(relevant) metrics[f"precision@{k}"].append(precision_at_k(relevant_set, retrieved, k)) metrics[f"recall@{k}"].append(recall_at_k(relevant_set, retrieved, k)) metrics["mrr"].append(mrr(relevant_set, retrieved)) metrics[f"ndcg@{k}"].append(ndcg_at_k(relevant_set, retrieved, k)) return {name: np.mean(values) for name, values in metrics.items()} def compute_embedding_similarity( embeddings1: np.ndarray, embeddings2: np.ndarray, metric: str = "cosine" ) -> np.ndarray: """Compute similarity matrix between embedding sets.""" if metric == "cosine": # Normalize and compute dot product norm1 = embeddings1 / np.linalg.norm(embeddings1, axis=1, keepdims=True) norm2 = embeddings2 / np.linalg.norm(embeddings2, axis=1, keepdims=True) return norm1 @ norm2.T elif metric == "euclidean": from scipy.spatial.distance import cdist return -cdist(embeddings1, embeddings2, metric='euclidean') elif metric == "dot": return embeddings1 @ embeddings2.T else: raise ValueError(f"Unknown metric: {metric}") def compare_embedding_models( texts: List[str], models: Dict[str, callable], queries: List[str], relevant_indices: List[List[int]], k: int = 5 ) -> Dict[str, Dict[str, float]]: """Compare multiple embedding models on retrieval quality.""" results = {} for model_name, embed_fn in models.items(): # Embed all texts doc_embeddings = np.array(embed_fn(texts)) retrieved_per_query = [] for query in queries: query_embedding = np.array(embed_fn([query])[0]) # Compute similarities similarities = compute_embedding_similarity( query_embedding.reshape(1, -1), doc_embeddings, metric="cosine" )[0] # Get top-k indices top_k_indices = np.argsort(similarities)[::-1][:k] retrieved_per_query.append([str(i) for i in top_k_indices]) # Convert relevant indices to string IDs relevant_docs = [[str(i) for i in indices] for indices in relevant_indices] results[model_name] = evaluate_retrieval_quality( queries, relevant_docs, retrieved_per_query, k ) return results ```
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SKILL.md 2.8 KB
--- name: embedding-strategies description: Select and optimize embedding models for semantic search and RAG applications. Use when choosing embedding models, implementing chunking strategies, or optimizing embedding quality for specific domains. --- # Embedding Strategies Guide to selecting and optimizing embedding models for vector search applications. ## When to Use This Skill - Choosing embedding models for RAG - Optimizing chunking strategies - Fine-tuning embeddings for domains - Comparing embedding model performance - Reducing embedding dimensions - Handling multilingual content ## Core Concepts ### 1. Embedding Model Comparison (2026) | Model | Dimensions | Max Tokens | Best For | | -------------------------- | ---------- | ---------- | ----------------------------------- | | **voyage-3-large** | 1024 | 32000 | Claude apps (Anthropic recommended) | | **voyage-3** | 1024 | 32000 | Claude apps, cost-effective | | **voyage-code-3** | 1024 | 32000 | Code search | | **voyage-finance-2** | 1024 | 32000 | Financial documents | | **voyage-law-2** | 1024 | 32000 | Legal documents | | **text-embedding-3-large** | 3072 | 8191 | OpenAI apps, high accuracy | | **text-embedding-3-small** | 1536 | 8191 | OpenAI apps, cost-effective | | **bge-large-en-v1.5** | 1024 | 512 | Open source, local deployment | | **all-MiniLM-L6-v2** | 384 | 256 | Fast, lightweight | | **multilingual-e5-large** | 1024 | 512 | Multi-language | ### 2. Embedding Pipeline ``` Document → Chunking → Preprocessing → Embedding Model → Vector ↓ [Overlap, Size] [Clean, Normalize] [API/Local] ``` ## Templates and detailed worked examples Full template library and detailed worked examples live in `references/details.md`. Read that file when you need the concrete templates. ## Best Practices ### Do's - **Match model to use case**: Code vs prose vs multilingual - **Chunk thoughtfully**: Preserve semantic boundaries - **Normalize embeddings**: For cosine similarity search - **Batch requests**: More efficient than one-by-one - **Cache embeddings**: Avoid recomputing for static content - **Use Voyage AI for Claude apps**: Recommended by Anthropic ### Don'ts - **Don't ignore token limits**: Truncation loses information - **Don't mix embedding models**: Incompatible vector spaces - **Don't skip preprocessing**: Garbage in, garbage out - **Don't over-chunk**: Lose important context - **Don't forget metadata**: Essential for filtering and debugging
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