qdrant-memory-usage-optimization

A troubleshooting guide for reducing Qdrant memory use, covering resident memory, operating-system file cache, vector storage, and indexes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Investigating growing memory use, out-of-memory crashes, suspected leaks, quantization results, and storage settings for vectors and indexes.
Why use it?
It explains why reported RAM use may not match simple calculations and helps distinguish normal file caching from memory pressure that can cause crashes or slowdowns.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/secondlifes/code-intel/memory-usage-optimization
Any agent
npx skills add SecondLifes/code-intel --skill memory-usage-optimization
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/SecondLifes/code-intel

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 82 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,411 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00082 $0.01411
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.00705
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00282
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00141

Measured yesterday against content hash 1915009666b5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

qdrant-memory-usage-optimization scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to qdrant-memory-usage-optimization — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.agents/skills/qdrant-performance-optimization/memory-usage-optimization/SKILL.md · 68 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 68 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Understanding memory usage

Qdrant operates with two types of memory:

  • Resident memory (aka RSSAnon) - memory used for internal data structures like the ID tracker, plus components that stay fully in RAM. On Qdrant 1.19 or newer this is controlled per-component with memory: pinned (e.g. quantized vectors, payload indexes); on 1.18 or older the equivalent is always_ram: true.

  • OS page cache - memory used for caching disk reads, which can be released when needed. Original vectors are normally stored in page cache, so the service won't crash if RAM is full, but performance may degrade. On Qdrant 1.19 or newer this corresponds to memory: cached (pre-warmed into page cache at startup) or memory: cold (lazy disk reads, not pre-warmed); on 1.18 or older it's controlled via the on_disk boolean on vectors, HNSW config, sparse vector index, and payload index. See Memory Tiers docs (available on 1.19+).

It is normal for the OS page cache to occupy all available RAM, but if resident memory is above 80% of total RAM, it is a sign of a problem.

Memory usage monitoring

  • Qdrant exposes memory usage through the /metrics endpoint. See Monitoring docs.

How much memory is needed for Qdrant?

Optimal memory usage depends on the use case.

For a detailed breakdown of memory usage at large scale, see Large scale memory usage example.

Payload indexes and HNSW graph also require memory, along with vectors themselves, so it's important to consider them in calculations.

Additionally, Qdrant requires some extra memory for optimizations. During optimization, optimized segments are fully loaded into RAM, so it is important to leave enough headroom. The larger max_segment_size is, the more headroom is needed.

Read the full file on GitHub · 68 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 68 lines · 82 tokens per session scan A 1915009666b5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

qdrant-memory-usage-optimization is a skill published in the GitHub repository SecondLifes/code-intel (2 stars, last pushed 21d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 82 tokens to every session and 1,411 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to qdrant-memory-usage-optimization, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

next-cache-components-adoption

Turn on Cache Components in a Next.js app and resolve the blocking routes it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable, adopt, or migrate to Cache Components, flip the cacheComponents flag, work through a flood of blocking-prerender / instant validation errors, run the cache-components-instant-false codemod, or…

vercel/next.js · 95 tokens

babysit-pr

Babysit a GitHub pull request after creation by continuously polling review comments, CI checks/workflow runs, and mergeability state until the PR is merged/closed or user help is required. Diagnose failures, retry likely flaky failures up to 3 times, auto-fix/push branch-related issues when appropriate, and keep…

openai/codex · 114 tokens

imagegen

Generate or edit raster images when the task benefits from AI-created bitmap visuals such as photos, illustrations, textures, sprites, mockups, or transparent-background cutouts. Use when Codex should create a brand-new image, transform an existing image, or derive visual variants from references, and the output…

openai/codex · 113 tokens

cpu-profile-analysis

Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…

microsoft/vscode · 71 tokens

next-cache-components-optimizer

Drive a Next.js route to instant navigation by setting up an agentic loop, under Cache Components / PPR, on initial load (hard navigation) and client-side navigation (soft navigation). Encode the goal as a failing @next/playwright instant() e2e and work it to green, one verified route at a time; the shipped test then…

vercel/next.js · 170 tokens