Setting Up Qdrant

Qdrant is a vector database NLQueries uses for three things:

Feature	What's stored
`process-history --embed`	Query capsule embeddings for semantic search
Semantic cache	Cached answers indexed by question embedding
Document connectors	Document chunk embeddings for retrieval

Qdrant is optional — NLQueries works without it, but --embed, semantic caching, and document retrieval won't be available.

Check if it's already running

curl http://localhost:6333/healthz
# Windows PowerShell: Invoke-WebRequest http://localhost:6333/healthz

A 200 OK with {"title":"qdrant","version":"..."} means it's up — skip to Configure NLQueries.

Option A — Docker (recommended for local development)

docker run -d --name qdrant --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 6333:6333 -p 6334:6334 \
  -v qdrant_storage:/qdrant/storage \
  qdrant/qdrant

Data persists in the qdrant_storage named volume across restarts. Manage it with docker stop/start qdrant, docker rm -f qdrant (data preserved), or docker volume rm qdrant_storage (data deleted).

Port 6333 (HTTP REST) is what NLQueries uses; port 6334 (gRPC) is optional.

Option B — Docker Compose (bundled with the NLQueries stack)

If you're already running the NLQueries Docker Compose stack, Qdrant is included — no separate setup:

cp .env.example .env   # set your LLM API key
docker compose up

Available at http://qdrant:6333 inside the Compose network, http://localhost:6333 on your host.

Option C — Qdrant Cloud (managed, no local install)

Sign up at cloud.qdrant.io and create a cluster (free tier available)
Copy the Cluster URL and API Key from the dashboard
Set both: bash export QDRANT_URL="https://<your-cluster>.qdrant.io" export QDRANT_API_KEY="<your-api-key>"

Option D — Native binary (no Docker)

# Linux
curl -L https://github.com/qdrant/qdrant/releases/latest/download/qdrant-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz | tar -xz
./qdrant

# macOS
brew install qdrant && qdrant

# Windows — download qdrant-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip from
# https://github.com/qdrant/qdrant/releases, extract, then run:
.\qdrant.exe

Starts on port 6333 by default; data stored in ./storage relative to the binary.

Configure NLQueries to use Qdrant

export QDRANT_URL=http://localhost:6333

NLQueries creates its collection (nlqueries by default) automatically on first use.

Verify

curl -s http://localhost:6333/healthz
nlqueries cache stats <connector-or-alias>

If Qdrant is reachable, cache stats prints collection statistics. A connection error means the port doesn't match QDRANT_URL or the container/binary isn't runn