I · Indexing

Indexing

Building the data structures that make retrieval fast at query time.

In one sentence

Indexing is the process of chunking, embedding and storing source documents so that, at query time, the retriever can return the most relevant passages in milliseconds rather than re-scanning every document.

When it matters

Whenever the corpus changes: every new manual revision requires a re-index pass for the new chunks to become retrievable.

A real-world example

A new firmware bulletin uploaded at 09:42 becomes retrievable at 09:46 in helpcode KB — about one minute per 100 pages on a standard tier.

Curated by helpcode research team · Last reviewed 2026-05-22