An “embeddings model” is trained to convert a piece of text into a vector, which can later be rapidly compared to other vectors to determine similarity between the pieces of text. Embeddings models are typically much smaller than LLMs, and will be extremely fast and cheap in comparison.

In Continue, embeddings are generated during indexing and then used by @Codebase to perform similarity search over your codebase.

You can add embed to a model’s roles to specify that it can be used to embed.

[Built-in model (VS Code only)] transformers.js is used as a built-in embeddings model in VS Code. In JetBrains, there currently is no built-in embedder.

If you have the ability to use any model, we recommend voyage-code-3, which is listed below along with the rest of the options for embeddings models.

If you want to generate embeddings locally, we recommend using nomic-embed-text with Ollama.

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Voyage AI

After obtaining an API key from here, you can configure like this:

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Ollama

See here for instructions on how to use Ollama for embeddings.

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Transformers.js (currently VS Code only)

Transformers.js is a JavaScript port of the popular Transformers library. It allows embeddings to be calculated entirely locally. The model used is all-MiniLM-L6-v2, which is shipped alongside the Continue extension.

config.yaml
models:
  - name: default-transformers
    provider: transformers.js
    roles:
      - embed

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Text Embeddings Inference

Hugging Face Text Embeddings Inference enables you to host your own embeddings endpoint. You can configure embeddings to use your endpoint as follows:

config.yaml
models:
  - name: Huggingface TEI Embedder
    provider: huggingface-tei
    apiBase: http://localhost:8080
    apiKey: <YOUR_TEI_API_KEY>
    roles: [embed]

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OpenAI

See here for instructions on how to use OpenAI for embeddings.

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Cohere

See here for instructions on how to use Cohere for embeddings.

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Gemini

See here for instructions on how to use Gemini for embeddings.

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Vertex

See here for instructions on how to use Vertex for embeddings.

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Mistral

See here for instructions on how to use Mistral for embeddings.

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NVIDIA

See here for instructions on how to use NVIDIA for embeddings.

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Bedrock

See here for instructions on how to use Bedrock for embeddings.

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WatsonX

See here for instructions on how to use WatsonX for embeddings.

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LMStudio

See here for instructions on how to use LMStudio for embeddings.