Create a managed knowledge base

When you create a managed knowledge base, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore manages the storage, indexing, and retrieval infrastructure for you. By default, a service-managed embedding model is used and no model selection or configuration is required. You can optionally provide your own Bedrock embedding model instead. You can also optionally provide a KMS key for encryption of the managed vector store.

After you create the knowledge base, connect it to a data source and start ingestion. For details on connecting a data source, see Connect a data source. To sync a data source, use the StartIngestionJob API. For details, see Sync your data with your Amazon Bedrock knowledge base.

To learn how to create a managed knowledge base, choose the tab for your preferred method:

Console

To create a managed knowledge base

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to Amazon Bedrock AgentCore > Built-in tools > Knowledge Base.

2. Choose Create Managed Knowledge Base.

3. (Optional) Expand Additional configurations of Knowledge Base details section to configure the following:

   • Add a description.

   • Choose an embedding model type:

     • Managed (default): A service-managed embedding model is used. No model selection or configuration is required.

     • Custom: Select a Bedrock embedding model. Choose the model to open the model selector, which shows available providers (Amazon, Cohere) and models.

   • Configure IAM permissions: choose Create and use a new service role (recommended) or select an existing role.

   • Configure AWS KMS encryption for the managed vector store (AWS managed key by default, or select a custom KMS key).

4. Under Data source, provide a data source name.

5. Select your data source type from the dropdown: Amazon S3, Confluence, Custom, Google Drive, OneDrive, SharePoint, or Web Crawler.

6. Configure the data source connection settings for your selected data source type.

7. (Optional) Expand Content parsing and chunking to configure the following:

   • Parsing strategy is set to Managed parser by default.

   • Select a text chunking strategy from the dropdown:

     • Default chunking (recommended): Splits text into fixed-size chunks.

     • Fixed-size chunking: Splits text into your set approximate token size.

     • No chunking: For pre-processed or pre-split documents.

8. (Optional) Expand Advanced configurations to configure advanced indexing. Under Content indexing, the default indexes text-based content from common documents. Enable advanced indexing for additional modalities:

   • Visual content in documents: Processes embedded visuals in .pdf, .docx, .ppt, .pptx files.

   • Audio files: Processes .mp3, .wav, .m4a, .flac, .ogg files.

   • Video files: Processes .mp4, .mov, .m4v files.

   Optionally set a maximum file size (MB) and configure the document deletion safeguard.

9. (Optional) Configure log delivery to send knowledge base ingestion logs to a destination such as CloudWatch Logs, Amazon S3, or Firehose.

10. Choose Create Knowledge Base.

11. Wait for the knowledge base and data source to be created (2–5 minutes). If you create a managed knowledge base with a customer managed key, the creation may take longer.

API

The following is an example of creating a managed knowledge base and configuring your data source using the API with the AWS CLI or supported SDK, such as Python. After you call CreateKnowledgeBase, you call CreateDataSource to create your data source with your connection information in dataSourceConfiguration.

To learn about customizations that you can apply to ingestion by including the optional vectorIngestionConfiguration field, see Customize ingestion for a data source.

AWS Command Line Interface

Step 1: Create the knowledge base

With a managed embedding model (default):

aws bedrock-agent create-knowledge-base \
 --name "my-managed-kb" \
 --role-arn "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/BedrockKBRole" \
 --description "My managed knowledge base" \
 --knowledge-base-configuration file://kb-config.json

kb-config.json
{
    "type": "MANAGED",
    "managedKnowledgeBaseConfiguration": {
        "embeddingModelType": "MANAGED"
    }
}

With a custom embedding model (customer-provided Bedrock model):

aws bedrock-agent create-knowledge-base \
 --name "my-custom-embed-kb" \
 --role-arn "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/BedrockKBRole" \
 --description "My managed knowledge base with custom embedding" \
 --knowledge-base-configuration file://kb-config.json

kb-config.json
{
    "type": "MANAGED",
    "managedKnowledgeBaseConfiguration": {
        "embeddingModelType": "CUSTOM",
        "embeddingModelArn": "arn:aws:bedrock:us-west-2::foundation-model/amazon.titan-embed-text-v2:0",
        "embeddingModelConfiguration": {
            "bedrockEmbeddingModelConfiguration": {
                "dimensions": 1024
            }
        }
    }
}

Note

When embeddingModelType is omitted, it defaults to MANAGED. When using MANAGED, you must not specify embeddingModelArn or embeddingModelConfiguration. When using CUSTOM, both fields are required.

Step 2: Create a data source

aws bedrock-agent create-data-source \
 --name "S3-connector" \
 --description "S3 data source connector for Amazon Bedrock to use content in S3" \
 --knowledge-base-id "your-knowledge-base-id" \
 --data-source-configuration file://bedrock-s3-managed-connector-configuration.json \
 --data-deletion-policy "DELETE" \
 --vector-ingestion-configuration '{"parsingConfiguration":{"parsingStrategy":"SMART_PARSING"}}'

bedrock-s3-managed-connector-configuration.json
{
    "type": "MANAGED_KNOWLEDGE_BASE_CONNECTOR",
    "managedKnowledgeBaseConnectorConfiguration": {
        "mediaExtractionConfiguration": {
            "imageExtractionConfiguration": {
                "imageExtractionStatus": "ENABLED"
            }
        },
        "connectorParameters": {
            "type": "S3",
            "version": "1",
            "connectionConfiguration": {
                "bucketName": "your-test-s3-bucket",
                "bucketOwnerAccountId": "123456789012"
            },
            "deletionProtectionConfiguration": {
                "enableDeletionProtection": false
            }
        }
    }
}

Embedding model options

Managed knowledge bases support two embedding model types:

• Managed embedding (default) – A service-managed embedding model is used automatically. You don't need to select a model, configure dimensions, or manage Bedrock service limits for embedding. The service handles model selection, hosting, and scaling transparently.

• Custom embedding – You provide your own Bedrock embedding model ARN. When using a custom embedding model, you must specify the model dimensions (1024) and float32 embedding data type. The following Bedrock embedding models are supported:

  • Amazon Titan Text Embeddings V2

  • Cohere Embed English v3

  • Cohere Embed Multilingual v3

  • Cohere Embed v4

  • Amazon Nova Multimodal Embeddings

Note

You cannot change the embedding model type after creating the knowledge base. To switch between managed and custom embedding, you must create a new knowledge base.

Important

If you create a knowledge base with a custom embedding model, the managed reranker is not available for that knowledge base. To use the managed reranker, create your knowledge base with the default managed embedding model.

Supported data source connectors

Managed knowledge bases support the following data source connectors:

• Amazon S3

• Confluence

• Microsoft SharePoint

• Google Drive

• Microsoft OneDrive

• Web Crawler

• Custom connector

For information about configuring data source connectors, see Connect a data source.