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Pinecone Nexus compiles your data into queryable knowledge that AI agents reach through a single interface. This page defines the core concepts and how they fit together, from the sources you bring in to the answers agents get back. For a high-level diagram of how they connect, see How Nexus works.

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Sources

Your data, wherever it lives: docs and wikis, databases, APIs and SaaS, object storage, event streams, code repos. Upload files directly, or import them through a connector (Box and Google Drive). Import and manage sources from a context’s Sources tab, using + Import.

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Workspace

The top-level container you work in. A workspace holds your contexts and the tasks that build and query them. It is backed by a Pinecone project, which provides identity and access and is the tenancy boundary. You can have more than one workspace, each with a name that is unique within its Pinecone project.

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Context

The unit of knowledge: Sources → Manifest → Knowledge. The manifest turns sources into knowledge. One context per dataset, and a query reads one or more. A context holds up to 10 GB across 100,000 files, with each file up to 250 MB.

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Manifest

Configuration, not code: the plan that turns sources into knowledge (what to chunk, embed, and distill into artifacts). Shape it on Design, and curation executes it. More on context design.

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Tasks and workflows

A task runs a workflow in a sandbox. Import ingests and cleans sources, Curate builds artifacts per the manifest, Explore proposes a manifest from your sources, and Optimize self-tunes the manifest from real query traffic. Search answers a query via KnowQL. Each workflow may ensemble multiple models as needed. Track them, and watch curation and query spend, under Activity.

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Artifacts (the knowledge)

The condensed knowledge that curation produces. Each artifact has a type (its classification, shown in the console) and a kind (a config within the type), plus a scope and provenance, and can be linked to others by typed edges into a knowledge graph. Browse them by type on a context’s Knowledge tab. See the artifact reference.

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Query

The single interface into Pinecone Nexus. A query asks a question scoped to one or more curated contexts. Pinecone Nexus plans its own retrieval and answers with citations. Query a single context from its Search this context box, or drive it from your own code via the KnowQL query endpoint. See the quickstart.

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KnowQL

The declarative query language agents use to query Nexus. A KnowQL query names a scope (the contexts to read) and an ask (the question), plus an optional typed shape for structured output. Nexus plans and runs its own retrieval, then returns a grounded, cited answer. The Composable Retriever serves your artifacts through KnowQL, and the Context Compiler is what builds those artifacts during curation.

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Sessions

A multi-turn conversation. A single query is one turn: a question in, an answer out. A session keeps state across turns, so follow-up questions resolve against what came before, and it can draw on more than one context at once. Start one from the workspace Home or Sessions > + New session, or from a context’s Query tab, where the Search this context box opens a session scoped to that context.

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Use

Query your contexts from other systems: an MCP server for Claude Desktop and other MCP clients, or the KnowQL query endpoint over HTTP.