The RedisVL CLI

RedisVL is a Python library with a dedicated CLI to create, inspect, list, migrate, and delete Redis search indexes, inspect index statistics, and run the RedisVL MCP server.

This notebook will walk through how to use the Redis Vector Library CLI (rvl).

Before running this notebook, be sure to

  1. Have installed redisvl and have that environment active for this notebook.
  2. Have a running Redis instance with Redis Search enabled

For complete command syntax and options, see the CLI Reference.

# First, see if the rvl tool is installed
!rvl version

Commands

The table below documents the current CLI tree. Use rvl index --help and rvl stats --help for detailed flag help and examples.

Command Purpose
rvl version display the installed RedisVL version
rvl index create create a new Redis search index from a schema YAML file
rvl index info display schema and storage details for an index
rvl index listall list Redis search indexes available on the target Redis deployment
rvl index delete delete an index while leaving indexed data in Redis
rvl index destroy delete an index and drop its indexed data
rvl stats display statistics for an existing Redis search index
rvl mcp run the RedisVL MCP server
rvl migrate wizard interactively build a migration plan and schema patch (experimental)
rvl migrate plan generate migration_plan.yaml from a patch or target schema (experimental)
rvl migrate apply execute a reviewed drop_recreate migration (experimental)
rvl migrate validate validate a completed migration and emit report artifacts (experimental)
rvl migrate rollback restore original vector bytes from a migration backup (experimental)
rvl migrate batch-plan generate a batch plan for multiple indexes (experimental)
rvl migrate batch-apply execute a batch migration with checkpoint state (experimental)
rvl migrate batch-resume resume an interrupted batch migration (experimental)
rvl migrate batch-status inspect batch migration checkpoint state (experimental)

Within data-plane commands, -i or --index targets an existing Redis index name and -s or --schema points to a schema YAML file. Shared Redis connection options such as --url, --host, and --port apply to rvl index and rvl stats.

Index

The rvl index command groups the index management workflows. Use rvl index --help to see the documented subcommands: create, info, listall, delete, and destroy. Whether you are working in Python or another language, this CLI can still be useful for managing and inspecting your indexes.

First, we will create an index from a yaml schema that looks like the following:

%%writefile schema.yaml

version: '0.1.0'

index:
    name: vectorizers
    prefix: doc
    storage_type: hash

fields:
    - name: sentence
      type: text
    - name: embedding
      type: vector
      attrs:
        dims: 768
        algorithm: flat
        distance_metric: cosine

Overwriting schema.yaml

# Create an index from a yaml schema
!rvl index create -s schema.yaml

Index created successfully

# list the indices that are available
!rvl index listall

Indices:
1. vectorizers

# inspect the index fields
!rvl index info -i vectorizers

Index Information:
╭───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────╮
│ Index Name    │ Storage Type  │ Prefixes      │ Index Options │ Indexing      │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤
| vectorizers   | HASH          | ['doc']       | []            | 0             |
╰───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────╯
Index Fields:
╭─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────╮
│ Name            │ Attribute       │ Type            │ Field Option    │ Option Value    │ Field Option    │ Option Value    │ Field Option    │ Option Value    │ Field Option    │ Option Value    │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ sentence        │ sentence        │ TEXT            │ WEIGHT          │ 1               │                 │                 │                 │                 │                 │                 │
│ embedding       │ embedding       │ VECTOR          │ algorithm       │ FLAT            │ data_type       │ FLOAT32         │ dim             │ 768             │ distance_metric │ COSINE          │
╰─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────╯

# delete an index without deleting the data within it
!rvl index delete -i vectorizers

Index deleted successfully

# see the indices that still exist
!rvl index listall

Indices:

Stats

The rvl stats command returns basic information about an index. Use -i or --index to target an existing Redis index name, or -s or --schema to target a schema-defined index. Shared Redis connection options such as --url, --host, and --port also apply here.

# create a new index with the same schema
# recreating the index will reindex the documents
!rvl index create -s schema.yaml

Index created successfully

# list the indices that are available
!rvl index listall

Indices:
1. vectorizers

# see all the stats for the index
!rvl stats -i vectorizers

Statistics:
╭─────────────────────────────┬────────────╮
│ Stat Key                    │ Value      │
├─────────────────────────────┼────────────┤
│ num_docs                    │ 0          │
│ num_terms                   │ 0          │
│ max_doc_id                  │ 0          │
│ num_records                 │ 0          │
│ percent_indexed             │ 1          │
│ hash_indexing_failures      │ 0          │
│ number_of_uses              │ 1          │
│ bytes_per_record_avg        │ nan        │
│ doc_table_size_mb           │ 0.00769805 │
│ inverted_sz_mb              │ 0          │
│ key_table_size_mb           │ 2.28881835 │
│ offset_bits_per_record_avg  │ nan        │
│ offset_vectors_sz_mb        │ 0          │
│ offsets_per_term_avg        │ nan        │
│ records_per_doc_avg         │ nan        │
│ sortable_values_size_mb     │ 0          │
│ total_indexing_time         │ 0          │
│ total_inverted_index_blocks │ 0          │
│ vector_index_sz_mb          │ 0          │
╰─────────────────────────────┴────────────╯

Migrate

The rvl migrate command provides a full workflow for changing index schemas without losing data. Common use cases include vector quantization (float32 → float16), algorithm changes (HNSW → FLAT), and adding/removing fields.

# List available indexes
rvl index listall --url redis://localhost:6379

# Build a migration plan interactively
rvl migrate wizard --index myindex --url redis://localhost:6379

# Or generate from a schema patch file
rvl migrate plan --index myindex --schema-patch patch.yaml --url redis://localhost:6379

# Apply with backup and multi-worker quantization
rvl migrate apply --plan migration_plan.yaml --url redis://localhost:6379 \
  --backup-dir /tmp/backups --workers 4 --batch-size 500

# Validate the result
rvl migrate validate --plan migration_plan.yaml --url redis://localhost:6379

See the Migration Guide for detailed usage, performance tuning, and examples.

Optional arguments

You can modify these commands with the below optional arguments

Argument Description Default
-u --url The full Redis URL to connect to redis://localhost:6379
--host Redis host to connect to localhost
-p --port Redis port to connect to. Must be an integer 6379
--user Redis username, if one is required default
--ssl Boolean flag indicating if ssl is required. If set the Redis base url changes to rediss:// None
-a --password Redis password, if one is required ""

Choosing your Redis instance

By default rvl first checks if you have REDIS_URL environment variable defined and tries to connect to that. If not, it then falls back to localhost:6379, unless you pass the --host or --port arguments

# specify your Redis instance to connect to
!rvl index listall --host localhost --port 6379

NBVAL_SKIP

Not run in CI. This cell would block until the nbval cell timeout

connect to rediss://jane_doe:password123@localhost:6379

!rvl index listall --user jane_doe -a password123 --ssl

# connect to rediss://jane_doe:password123@localhost:6379
!rvl index listall --user jane_doe -a password123 --ssl

Index deleted successfully

!rvl index destroy -i vectorizers
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