Release Notes: Semantic Search Agent#

This section tracks releases of the Semantic Search Agent microservice. The most recent release is listed first.

Version 2026.3.0#

Release Date: TBD

Version 2026.1.0#

First release of the Semantic Search Agent as a production-ready, multi-strategy AI comparison microservice.

Release Date: June 17, 2026

New:

  • REST Comparison API with three endpoints:

    • POST /api/v1/compare/order — Two-pass order validation (exact, then semantic) that returns missing, extra, quantity-mismatch, and matched item sets.

    • POST /api/v1/compare/inventory — Per-item inventory lookup with the exact and semantic fallback against a configurable JSON inventory.

    • POST /api/v1/compare/semantic — Generic pairwise semantic comparison that returns boolean match, confidence score, and VLM reasoning.

  • Three Matching Strategies (exact, semantic, or hybrid) that are selectable via the DEFAULT_MATCHING_STRATEGY environment variable.

  • Two-Pass Comparison Engine — The engine resolves exact matches first without VLM calls and applies semantic matching only to unmatched items to minimize inference cost.

  • Pluggable VLM Backends built-in:

    • OVMS — OpenVINO model server via OpenAI-compatible /v3/chat/completions endpoint. Proxy bypass for internal OpenVINO model server hosts.

    • OpenVINO Local — In-process inference that uses the openvino-genai library with configurable device (GPU, CPU, or AUTO).

    • OpenAI API — Cloud API fallback for development and testing.

  • VLMBackendFactory — Singleton factory with instance caching to avoid re-initializing backends on each request.

  • Response Caching — In-memory (MemoryCache) and Redis-backed (RedisCache) caches for semantic match results, keyed by Message Digest Algorithm 5 (MD5) hash of the input pair and context. Configurable time-to-live (TTL).

  • Prometheus Metrics — api_requests_total, matches_total, request_duration_seconds, vlm_inference_duration_seconds, cache_hits_total, cache_misses_total, and vlm_backend_available gauges.

  • Pydantic Settings — Full environment variable and .env file configuration with type validation and clear startup errors on missing required variables.

  • Health Check Endpoint (GET /api/v1/health) reports service version, VLM backend type, VLM availability status, and uptime.

  • New User Guide documentation set that includes the Overview, Get Started, How It Works, Configuration, API Reference, Troubleshooting, and Release Notes sections.

  • Containers run as a non-root user with UID 1000, and include a built-in Docker health check.

  • An optional Redis service in the Docker Compose configuration, which provides persistent caching for semantic match results.

  • Modular matcher and VLM backend design, which allow for extension with new strategies or inference backends.