Capabilities

Edge implements the same plan path as remote Qdrant and shares its response envelope, but it is a single-process engine. This page is the definitive boundary: what runs offline, what fails, and with which stable error code.

The rule is simple: unsupported is a loud, stable error, never a silent no-op. Every rejection carries a reason and, when applicable, a "use remote Qdrant" hint.

Capability matrix

Capability	Edge	Notes
Parser, planner, explain	yes	identical to remote
Dense nearest search	yes	HNSW, single-threaded per shard
Sparse search (BM25 hash)	yes	default; real ONNX with sparse_model
Hybrid dense + sparse	yes	front-form or tail-form USING HYBRID
Fusion RRF / DBSF	yes	plain FUSION RRF uses k = 2; parameterized form honors PARAMS (rrf_k, rrf_weights)
MMR	yes	dense only
Recommend	partial	best_score and sum_scores only
Context / Discover	yes	requires embeddable inputs
Formula scoring	yes	full operator set including geo and decay
Relevance feedback	yes	naive strategy
QUERY POINTS	yes	integers or UUIDs
Scroll	yes	cursor via AFTER / next_page_offset
Count	yes	exact by default
Order-by queries	yes	QUERY ORDER BY field ASC/DESC
Random sample	yes	QUERY SAMPLE RANDOM
CTEs / prefetch	yes	WITH … PREFETCH
Cross rerank	yes	client-side, host cross-encoder model
Score threshold, offset/limit	yes
PARAMS (hnsw_ef, exact, quantization, indexed_only)	yes
Payload filters	yes	comparisons, IN, BETWEEN, MATCH, geo, NESTED, …
UPSERT with auto-embedding	yes	dense, sparse, multi, image
DELETE / payload / vector operations	yes	by id or filter
CREATE/DROP COLLECTION	yes
CREATE/DROP INDEX	yes	keyword, integer, float, bool, geo, text, datetime, uuid
SHOW COLLECTIONS / SHOW COLLECTION	yes
Query/update batching	partial	fan-out, not a native batch RPC
GROUP BY	no	QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-GROUP-BY
SHARD routing / custom sharding	no	QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-SHARD
CREATE/DROP SHARD KEY	no	QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-SHARD-KEY
ALTER COLLECTION	no	QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-ALTER
Collection WITH PARAMS	no	QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-COLLECTION-PARAMS
PARAMS (acorn = …)	no	QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-ACORN
RECOMMEND STRATEGY average_vector	no	QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-RECOMMEND-STRATEGY
Point-id query inputs	no	QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-POINT-REF
String point IDs (non-UUID)	no	QQL-EDGE-INVALID-POINT-ID
gRPC transport	no	edge has no protobuf dependency
PARAMS (timeout, consistency)	no	QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-TIMEOUT / QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-CONSISTENCY
Remote image URLs	partial	local ONNX embedder: local file paths only; the HTTP embedder forwards the source string verbatim, so endpoints that accept HTTP(S) image URLs can back CLIP vision

What works

Schema and mutations

QQLCollections and indexesTry in playground↗

CREATE COLLECTION docs HYBRID;

CREATE INDEX ON COLLECTION docs FOR category TYPE keyword;

SHOW COLLECTIONS;

DROP COLLECTION docs;

QQLUpsert with auto-embeddingTry in playground↗

UPSERT INTO docs VALUES
  {id: 1, text: 'runs locally', category: 'edge'},
  {id: 2, text: 'shipped to production', category: 'qql'}
USING HYBRID;

Upserts embed text on-device (or via the configured HTTP endpoint) into the schema's dense and sparse vectors. Explicit vectors work too:

QQLExplicit dense vectorTry in playground↗

UPSERT INTO docs VALUES {id: 1, text: 'precomputed', vector: {dense: [0.1, 0.2, 0.3]}};

Point and payload operations

QQLDelete and payload updatesTry in playground↗

DELETE FROM docs WHERE status = 'expired';

UPDATE docs SET PAYLOAD = {status: 'reviewed'} WHERE id = 42;

UPDATE docs SET VECTOR = [0.1, 0.2, 0.3] WHERE id = 42;

CLEAR PAYLOAD FROM docs WHERE status = 'archived';

DELETE PAYLOAD draft FROM docs WHERE id = 42;

DELETE VECTOR colbert FROM docs WHERE id = 42;

Search

QQLDense, sparse, and hybrid searchTry in playground↗

QUERY TEXT 'edge vector search' FROM docs USING dense LIMIT 10;

QUERY TEXT 'keyword style' FROM docs USING sparse LIMIT 10;

QUERY 'hybrid' FROM docs USING HYBRID LIMIT 10;

QUERY HYBRID TEXT 'hybrid' DENSE dense SPARSE sparse FUSION RRF FROM docs LIMIT 10;

QQLFusion, MMR, and recommendationTry in playground↗

WITH candidates AS (QUERY TEXT 'x' USING dense LIMIT 100)
QUERY FUSION RRF FROM docs PREFETCH (candidates) LIMIT 10;

QUERY MMR TEXT 'x' DIVERSITY 0.7 CANDIDATES 100 FROM docs USING dense LIMIT 10;

QUERY RECOMMEND POSITIVE (1, 2) NEGATIVE (3) STRATEGY best_score FROM docs USING dense LIMIT 10;

QQLAdvanced query formsTry in playground↗

QUERY FORMULA $score * 0.8 DEFAULTS (score = 0.0) FROM docs LIMIT 10;

QUERY CONTEXT (POSITIVE TEXT 'good' NEGATIVE TEXT 'bad') FROM docs LIMIT 10;

QUERY SAMPLE RANDOM FROM docs LIMIT 10;

QUERY ORDER BY year DESC FROM docs LIMIT 10;

Cross-encoder reranking runs client-side: candidate stages execute against local storage and the host cross-encoder model scores the pairs.

Params and pagination

QQLSearch params, threshold, and offsetTry in playground↗

QUERY TEXT 'x' FROM docs USING dense
PARAMS (hnsw_ef = 64, exact = true)
SCORE THRESHOLD 0.5
LIMIT 10 OFFSET 20;

Batching is fan-out

execute with a list of statements or a semicolon-delimited string is executed statement-by-statement against the edge backend. There is no native batch RPC — results are returned per operation with cardinality matching the input.

What fails — and how

Every unsupported feature returns a stable error code. The message includes the feature, the reason, and a remediation hint.

Code	Feature
QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-GROUP-BY	GROUP BY / query groups
QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-SHARD	SHARD routing or collection sharding options
QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-SHARD-KEY	CREATE / DROP SHARD KEY
QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-ALTER	ALTER COLLECTION
QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-COLLECTION-PARAMS	collection WITH PARAMS (replication, shard count, …)
QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-ACORN	PARAMS (acorn = …)
QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-RECOMMEND-STRATEGY	RECOMMEND STRATEGY average_vector
QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-POINT-REF	point-id-only inputs (need materialized vectors)
QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-ROUTE	any other unmapped projection
QQL-EDGE-INVALID-POINT-ID	non-integer, non-UUID string point IDs

Example rejection:

GROUP BY / query groups is not supported offline: qdrant-edge has no /points/query/groups
endpoint. Use remote Qdrant (REST or gRPC) for this feature.

Point IDs: integers or UUIDs only

Edge storage represents IDs as unsigned integers or UUIDs. A string like 'doc-1' is rejected with QQL-EDGE-INVALID-POINT-ID rather than silently mapped — deleting "half a batch" because some IDs could not be represented is exactly what edge refuses to do.

Group by, shards, and clusters need remote Qdrant

GROUP BY, custom SHARD routing, shard-key administration, ALTER COLLECTION, ACORN, and collection WITH PARAMS are cluster features. Edge keeps the whole feature surface of the language and rejects at execution — switch to REST or gRPC for those workloads.

Code catalog

See the complete list of fixed codes in the error codes reference.

Technical details

Recommendations and point reference inputs: QUERY POINT 42 FROM docs, QUERY RECOMMEND POSITIVE (1), and similar point-id inputs need the point's vector materialized. Text, vector, or image inputs that can be embedded by the configured model work; point-id-only inputs fail with QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-POINT-REF (or resolve to vectors first).

Request-level parameters

timeout and consistency are request-level fields for remote REST/gRPC transports and are rejected offline with QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-TIMEOUT and QQL-EDGE-UNSUPPORTED-CONSISTENCY. hnsw_ef, exact, quantization, and indexed_only are honored.

Transport

Edge has no gRPC and no protobuf dependency. The runtime executor always dispatches through the embedded QdrantOps backend. If your tooling needs gRPC, use the remote path.

For storage behavior across restarts and the data directory layout, continue to persistence.