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Manual Knowledge Filters

Manual filtering gives you full control over which documents are searched by specifying filters directly in your code.

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Step 1: Attach Metadata

There are two ways to attach metadata to your documents:
  1. Attach Metadata When Initializing the Knowledge Base 
    knowledge_base = PDFKnowledgeBase(
    path=[
        {
            "path": "path/to/cv1.pdf",
            "metadata": {
                "user_id": "jordan_mitchell",
                "document_type": "cv",
                "year": 2025,
            },
        },
        # ... more documents ...
    ],
    vector_db=vector_db,
)
knowledge_base.load(recreate=True)
  2. Attach Metadata When Loading Documents One by One 
    # Initialize the PDFKnowledgeBase
knowledge_base = PDFKnowledgeBase(
    vector_db=vector_db,
    num_documents=5,
)

# Load first document with user_1 metadata
knowledge_base.load_document(
    path=path/to/cv1.pdf,
    metadata={"user_id": "jordan_mitchell", "document_type": "cv", "year": 2025},
    recreate=True,  # Set to True only for the first run, then set to False
)

# Load second document with user_2 metadata
knowledge_base.load_document(
    path=path/to/cv2.pdf,
    metadata={"user_id": "taylor_brooks", "document_type": "cv", "year": 2025},
)
💡 Tips:
• Use Option 1 if you have all your documents and metadata ready at once.
• Use Option 2 if you want to add documents incrementally or as they become available.

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Step 2: Query with Filters

You can pass filters in two ways:

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1. On the Agent (applies to all queries)

agent = Agent(
    knowledge=knowledge_base,
    search_knowledge=True,
    knowledge_filters={"user_id": "jordan_mitchell"},
)
agent.print_response(
    "Tell me about Jordan Mitchell's experience and skills",
    markdown=True,
)

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2. On Each Query (overrides Agent filters for that run)

agent = Agent(
    knowledge=knowledge_base,
    search_knowledge=True,
)
agent.print_response(
    "Tell me about Jordan Mitchell's experience and skills",
    knowledge_filters={"user_id": "jordan_mitchell"},
    markdown=True,
)
If you pass filters both on the Agent and on the query, the query-level filters take precedence.

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Combining Multiple Filters

You can filter by multiple fields: 
agent = Agent(
    knowledge=knowledge_base,
    search_knowledge=True,
    knowledge_filters={
        "user_id": "jordan_mitchell",
        "document_type": "cv",
        "year": 2025,
    }
)
agent.print_response(
    "Tell me about Jordan Mitchell's experience and skills",
    markdown=True,
)

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Try It Yourself!

  • Load documents with different metadata.
  • Query with different filter combinations.
  • Observe how the results change!

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Developer Resources