Configuring AIDB v7

To use AIDB, add it to shared_preload_libraries, create the extensions in the database, and manage user access. Then verify the installation. This page also covers proxy settings and the AIDB configuration parameters (GUCs) you can tune afterward.

Configuring shared_preload_libraries

1. In the postgresql.conf file, add aidb to the shared_preload_libraries parameter:

   → WrapCopy

   shared_preload_libraries = 'aidb'

   Note

   If shared_preload_libraries already has other extensions listed, append aidb using a comma separator. The order doesn't matter.

2. Restart Postgres.

Creating the extensions

1. Create the AIDB extension in your database:

   → WrapCopy

   CREATE EXTENSION aidb CASCADE;

   The CASCADE option automatically installs the required vector extension if it isn't already present.

   Registering AIDB with PGD

   If you're running EDB Postgres Distributed (PGD), run the following after creating the extension to register AIDB catalog tables in the replication set:

   → WrapCopy

   SELECT aidb.bdr_setup();

2. If you plan to use external data sources such as S3-compatible object stores or local file system volumes, also install the Postgres File System (PGFS) extension:

   → WrapCopy

   CREATE EXTENSION pgfs;

   For more information, see PGFS documentation.

Managing user access with the aidb_users role

When you create the AIDB extension, Postgres automatically creates a role named aidb_users. Grant a user membership in this role to give it access to AIDB's SQL functions. This role isn't removed if you later drop the extension.

aidb_users is designed to simplify access management for AIDB features:

• Purpose: Granting a user the aidb_users role gives it access to all AIDB functions, so it can use the extension's capabilities.
• Security: The aidb_users role doesn't grant access to AIDB's internal tables, so only the extension's public API is exposed to users who hold it.
• Background workers: A background worker executes as the role that defined it, or as a different role you specify, provided that role has access to it.

To let a user use AIDB functions, grant them the aidb_users role:

GRANT aidb_users TO your_user;

For example, create a role named alice with no privileges or role membership to start with:

CREATE ROLE alice
  LOGIN
  PASSWORD 'change_me';   -- replace with a real password

Then add alice to the aidb_users role:

GRANT aidb_users TO alice;

alice now inherits whatever privileges aidb_users has — for example, EXECUTE on routines in the aidb schema.

Membership in aidb_users doesn't grant access to your own data. Give alice (not aidb_users) the privileges it needs on the tables AIDB will read or write. This example grants access to three arbitrary tables that would ordinarily be source tables used in a pipeline:

GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE
  ON public.documents,
     public.email_text,
     public.chats
  TO alice;

If alice also needs to create objects in the public schema:

GRANT CREATE ON SCHEMA public TO alice;

Managing audit access with the aidb_governance role

When you create the AIDB extension, Postgres also creates a role named aidb_governance, separate from aidb_users. The role exists to give an auditor or monitoring tool read access to the trace, log, and metric data AIDB records for observability, without also granting that auditor or tool the ability to use AIDB's functions.

• Purpose: aidb_governance can read the aidb_otel.metrics, aidb_otel.logs, and aidb_otel.traces tables, and run the manual retention cleanup function. It can also read the id, name, purpose, and created_at columns of aidb.agents, and it's the only role that can create, change, and delete agent purposes. See Permissions.
• Security: aidb_governance is the only non-superuser role with SELECT access to the aidb_otel.* tables.
• Separation from aidb_users: aidb_users can write into aidb_otel.* indirectly (every AIDB function call that's traced ends up in those tables), but has no SELECT on the tables themselves. A role only needs aidb_governance in addition to aidb_users if it also needs to query or export that data.

To let a user or service account read AIDB's observability data, grant it the aidb_governance role:

GRANT aidb_governance TO your_auditor_role;

Configuring proxy settings

If your environment routes outbound HTTP traffic through a proxy, set the HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY environment variables in the Postgres environment file. On Ubuntu with community Postgres, this file is at /etc/postgresql/<version>/main/environment:

echo "HTTP_PROXY = 'http://<your-proxy-settings>/'" | sudo tee -a /etc/postgresql/16/main/environment
echo "HTTPS_PROXY = 'http://<your-proxy-settings>/'" | sudo tee -a /etc/postgresql/16/main/environment

Then restart Postgres for the changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart postgresql@16-main

Replace <your-proxy-settings> with your proxy address, and 16 with your Postgres version. See your Postgres distribution's documentation for the exact location of the environment file.

Configuring AIDB parameters (GUCs)

AIDB exposes a set of Postgres configuration parameters, known as GUCs (Grand Unified Configuration, Postgres's term for its runtime settings), in the aidb.* namespace. Set them in postgresql.conf, per-session with SET, or per-connection with -c. Most parameters below are USERSET — any role can change them for its own session; parameters with a different context are called out individually. The sections below cover threading limits, model downloads, llama.cpp native logs, network egress, credential environment variables, and OpenTelemetry tracing.

Threading limits

Both apply live: a session-local SET takes effect immediately in that backend only. Setting either with ALTER SYSTEM or in postgresql.conf takes effect after pg_reload_conf() (or SIGHUP), and propagates to all backends and background workers — no restart required.

aidb.max_threads

SET aidb.max_threads = 4;

aidb.max_io_threads

SET aidb.max_io_threads = 4;

See Threading limits for what these two parameters control, how they interact, and when to lower them.

Model download

The following parameters control how AIDB downloads local model files from HuggingFace (see Local models for applicable providers).

aidb.download_log_level

Controls where routine download-progress messages are sent. Warnings and errors are unaffected.

Example:

SET aidb.download_log_level = 'log';

aidb.download_max_attempts

Caps the total number of download attempts per file. The downloader aborts early when consecutive attempts make zero progress, so this parameter is primarily a safety ceiling against excessive retry loops.

Lower it (for example, to 3 or 5) for fail-fast behavior in CI or scripted batch jobs. Raise it only for very large files on lossy links.

Example:

SET aidb.download_max_attempts = 5;

llama.cpp native logs

aidb.enable_llamacpp_logs

Off by default: llama.cpp's native logging is verbose — hundreds of lines per model load — so it's suppressed unless you need it. This is separate from aidb.download_log_level above, which controls AIDB's own download-progress messages; the two are independent.

Unlike the other parameters on this page, aidb.enable_llamacpp_logs is SUSET (a superuser, or a role granted SET on the parameter, can change it) and is read once when the extension initializes. Setting it with SET, ALTER SYSTEM, or editing postgresql.conf and reloading (pg_reload_conf()) doesn't take effect until Postgres is restarted:

aidb.enable_llamacpp_logs = true

sudo systemctl restart postgresql@16-main

Applies only to llamacpp_generate and llamacpp_embeddings models — it has no effect on Candle-based models (bert_local, clip_local, t5_local, llama_instruct_local). See Local models — Troubleshooting for when to use this.

Network egress

The following parameter restricts outbound HTTP traffic from AIDB — both calls to model provider APIs and model file downloads from HuggingFace. When unset, no restriction is applied and AIDB can reach any host.

Entry format

Each comma-separated entry is one of:

Whitespace around entries is ignored. CIDR entries are checked only against IP literals — hostnames aren't resolved for matching.

Resolution order

For each outbound request, AIDB checks aidb.egress_allowlist first. If it isn't set, AIDB falls back to edb.egress_allowlist. If neither is set, no check is applied. Redirects (for example, HuggingFace redirecting to a CDN host) are re-checked against the same allowlist; a redirect to a host not on the list is rejected.

Example

Allow only direct calls to OpenAI and HuggingFace plus its CDN:

aidb.egress_allowlist = 'api.openai.com, huggingface.co, .huggingface.co, cdn-lfs.huggingface.co'

When a request is rejected, AIDB raises an error that names the active parameter so the operator can adjust the list.

Credential environment variables

aidb.create_model(credentials_env => ...) and aidb.import_mcp_tools(headers_env => ...) read a Postgres backend process environment variable, named by the caller, instead of storing a credential in the database. The following parameter restricts which variable names may be referenced this way:

Combined with a caller-controlled provider or MCP server URL, an unrestricted variable name would let a malicious configuration read out unrelated secrets that happen to live in the Postgres process's environment — this parameter closes that off by default while staying overridable per deployment. See Credentials from environment variables for credentials_env, and MCP tools for headers_env.

Kubernetes Secret paths

aidb.create_model(credentials_k8s_secret => ...) and aidb.import_mcp_tools(headers_k8s_secret => ...) read a credential from a file path on the Postgres host at use time, typically a Kubernetes Secret mounted as a volume. The following parameter restricts which paths may be read:

See Credentials from a Kubernetes Secret.

Semantic knowledge base audit log

See Auditing changes.

OpenTelemetry tracing

AIDB emits OpenTelemetry (OTel) traces, logs, and metrics for its own function calls and background workers. The following parameters control where that data goes, what it contains, and how long it's kept. See Observability for the schema, functions, and attributes these parameters govern.

Client selection

Values for aidb.otel_client:

A change to aidb.otel_client takes effect for new backends; a backend that already made its first instrumented call keeps using whichever client it started with.

SQL query tracing

Both are off by default: parameter values are live application data, not a query's own hand-written literals.

Exporter background worker

Forwards rows from aidb_otel.{traces,logs,metrics} to an external OTLP/HTTP collector. One worker runs per database, only when enabled and an endpoint is set.

All five support a per-database override with ALTER DATABASE <db> SET, applied the next time the dispatcher polls.

Cleaner background worker

Deletes rows older than a retention window from aidb_otel.{traces,logs,metrics}. One worker runs per database.

All three support the same per-database ALTER DATABASE <db> SET override as the exporter parameters above. You can also trigger a cleanup pass immediately, regardless of aidb.otel_cleaner_enabled, with aidb.run_otel_retention_cleanup() — see Observability.

Validating the installation

Confirm that the extensions are installed by running \dx in psql and looking for aidb, vector, pgfs (if installed), in the output:

aidb=# \dx

                                     List of installed extensions
       Name            | Version |   Schema   |                        Description
-----------------------+---------+------------+------------------------------------------------------------
 aidb                  | 7.6.0   | aidb       | aidb: makes it easy to build AI applications with postgres
 pgfs                  | 3.3.0   | pgfs       | pgfs: enables access to filesystem-like storage locations
 vector                | 0.8.0   | public     | vector data type and ivfflat and hnsw access methods