Cloudflare AI Search Reference

Expert guidance for implementing Cloudflare AI Search (formerly AutoRAG), Cloudflare's managed semantic search and RAG service.

Overview

AI Search is a managed RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipeline that combines:

• Automatic semantic indexing of your content
• Vector similarity search
• Built-in LLM generation

Key value propositions:

• Zero vector management - No manual embedding, indexing, or storage
• Auto-indexing - Content automatically re-indexed every 6 hours
• Built-in generation - Optional AI response generation from retrieved context
• Multi-source - Index from R2 buckets or website crawls

Data source options:

• R2 bucket - Index files from Cloudflare R2 (supports MD, TXT, HTML, PDF, DOC, CSV, JSON)
• Website - Crawl and index website content (requires Cloudflare-hosted domain)

Indexing lifecycle:

• Automatic 6-hour refresh cycle
• Manual "Force Sync" available (30s rate limit)
• Not designed for real-time updates

Quick Start

1. Create AI Search instance in dashboard:

• Go to Cloudflare Dashboard → AI Search → Create
• Choose data source (R2 or website)
• Configure instance name and settings

2. Configure Worker:

// wrangler.jsonc
{
  "ai": {
    "binding": "AI"
  }
}

3. Use in Worker:

  async fetch(request, env) {
    const answer = await env.AI.autorag("my-search-instance").aiSearch({
      query: "How do I configure caching?",
      model: "@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast"
    });
    
    return Response.json({ answer: answer.response });
  }
};

When to Use AI Search

AI Search vs Vectorize

AI Search vs Direct Workers AI

search() vs aiSearch()

Real-time Updates Consideration

AI Search is NOT ideal if:

• Need real-time content updates (<6 hours)
• Content changes multiple times per hour
• Strict freshness requirements

AI Search IS ideal if:

• Content relatively stable (docs, policies, knowledge bases)
• 6-hour refresh acceptable
• Prefer zero-ops over real-time

Platform Limits

Reading Order

Navigate these references based on your task:

In This Reference

• api.md - API endpoints, methods, TypeScript interfaces
• configuration.md - Setup, data sources, wrangler config
• patterns.md - Common patterns, decision guidance, code examples
• gotchas.md - Troubleshooting, code-level gotchas, limits

See Also

• Cloudflare AI Search Docs
• Workers AI Docs
• Vectorize Docs