external-collection

Prerequisites

1. CLI installed, logged in, and cluster context set (see setup skill).
2. The target collection must already exist as an external collection (created with an externalSource / externalSpec schema in the collection skill). Plain in-place collections do not have refresh jobs.
3. The cluster must be running a kite-coordinator build that exposes /v2/vectordb/jobs/external_collection/* (PR #5735 or later). On older data planes the API returns 404 -- in that case ask the user to upgrade the cluster.

Commands Reference

The external-collection resource has a single operation, refresh, with three actions: trigger, describe, and list. All three are data-plane calls and inherit the database from the current context unless overridden with --database.

Trigger a refresh job

zilliz external-collection refresh trigger --name <collection-name>
# Optional:
#   --database <db-name>          Override the context database
#   --external-source <src>       Override the external source registered on the collection
#   --external-spec <spec>        Override the external spec registered on the collection

trigger returns the new jobId. Use it with refresh describe to poll status. The override flags are intentionally rare -- normally the source and spec are pinned at collection-create time, and a plain refresh trigger --name <name> is enough.

Describe a refresh job

zilliz external-collection refresh describe --job-id <id>

Returns the job's state, progress, and (on failure) the error message.

List refresh jobs

zilliz external-collection refresh list
# Optional:
#   --name <collection-name>      Filter to one external collection
#   --database <db-name>          Override the context database

Without filters, list returns recent refresh jobs scoped to the current database. Pair with --query to extract a single field, e.g.:

zilliz external-collection refresh list --name my_external_coll \
  --query 'data[?state==`Pending` || state==`Running`].jobId'