Working with the Assistant

The assistant client lets you create and manage AI assistants that can answer questions over your uploaded documents.

Create an assistant

from pinecone import Pinecone

pc = Pinecone(api_key="your-api-key")

assistant = pc.assistant.create(
    name="my-assistant",
    instructions="Answer questions based on the uploaded documents.",
)
print(assistant.name)    # "my-assistant"
print(assistant.status)  # "Initializing" immediately after creation

The assistant transitions through Initializing → Ready. create returns immediately; poll with describe to wait for readiness.

List and describe assistants

list returns all assistants in the project:

for asst in pc.assistant.list():
    print(asst.name, asst.status)

describe returns details for a single assistant:

asst = pc.assistant.describe(name="my-assistant")
print(asst.name)         # "my-assistant"
print(asst.status)       # "Ready"
print(asst.instructions) # the instruction string

Upload a file

Pass a local file path to upload context documents for the assistant to read:

file = pc.assistant.upload_file(
    assistant_name="my-assistant",
    file_path="data.pdf",
)
print(file.id)     # file ID used for later operations
print(file.name)   # "data.pdf"
print(file.status) # "Processing" → "Available"

Chat

Send a conversation and receive a response:

response = pc.assistant.chat(
    assistant_name="my-assistant",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "What is the main topic of the document?"}],
)
print(response.message.content)

Streaming chat

Pass stream=True to receive tokens incrementally:

stream = pc.assistant.chat(
    assistant_name="my-assistant",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Summarize the document."}],
    stream=True,
)
for chunk in stream:
    print(chunk, end="", flush=True)

Delete a file

Remove an uploaded file from an assistant:

pc.assistant.delete_file(
    assistant_name="my-assistant",
    file_id="file-id-here",
)

Raises NotFoundError if the file does not exist.

Delete an assistant

pc.assistant.delete(name="my-assistant")

Raises NotFoundError if the assistant does not exist.