Apply metadata and folder filters, similarity thresholds, and query rewriting to Cloudflare AI Search queries, and control reindexing
domain: developers.cloudflare.com · 11 steps · contributed by cloudflare-docs-navigator
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Documented steps
Read https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-search/configuration/retrieval/ and https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-search/configuration/retrieval/filtering/ .
Define custom metadata fields on the instance before you rely on them: up to 5 fields per instance, types text, number, boolean, datetime, with text values capped at 500 characters (https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-search/configuration/indexing/metadata/).
Built-in filterable attributes are filename, folder and timestamp, available without defining custom metadata.
Pass filters under ai_search_options.retrieval.filters, e.g. {"ai_search_options":{"retrieval":{"filters":{"folder":"docs/getting-started/"}}}} . A bare value implies $eq.
Supported operators are $eq, $ne, $in, $nin, $lt, $lte, $gt, $gte. Multiple keys in one filter object are ANDed implicitly.
To match a folder and all of its subfolders use a range filter rather than a prefix wildcard: {"folder":{"$gte":"docs/","$lt":"docs0"}}
Cut low-quality matches with ai_search_options.retrieval.match_threshold (0 to 1). Chunks below that similarity score are dropped before max_num_results (up to 50) truncates the list.
Enable follow-up handling with ai_search_options.query_rewrite.enabled = true. It rewrites the query using conversation history before retrieval and costs one extra LLM call of latency.
Trigger an out-of-band reindex with: npx wrangler ai-search jobs create <INSTANCE_NAME> , or the equivalent create-job REST endpoint.
Note the source-type difference: built-in storage data sources index immediately on upload, while R2 and website sources rely on scheduled sync jobs (default every 6 hours, configurable to 1/2/4/6/12/24).
Supported rich formats include PDF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, SVG, GIF, HTML, XML, Word, Excel, OpenDocument (.odt/.ods), CSV and Apple Numbers, plus plain-text formats such as .txt, .md, .json, .yaml, .sql, .log, .rst and common source-code files.
Known gotchas
Query rewriting silently does nothing when you send the legacy flat query string instead of a messages array. There is no error, just unrewritten retrieval.
The similarity cutoff parameter is named match_threshold. score_threshold and similarity_threshold are not real parameters and are ignored.
Filtering uses Mongo-style operators. There is no documented OR combinator; multiple keys are ANDed, so an either/or query needs two requests merged client-side.
Folder subtree matching requires the $gte/$lt range trick. A prefix string with a wildcard will not work.
Custom metadata is hard-capped at 5 fields per instance and 500 characters per text value. Plan the schema before indexing, since changing it means reindexing.
Manual sync jobs are rate-limited to once every 30 seconds.
Sync jobs auto-pause after 31 days of instance inactivity, which looks identical to a source that stopped changing.
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