Last Updated: February 5, 2026 Status: Production Ready Difficulty: Easy ⭐
Building knowledge bases and query engines with LlamaIndex requires well-structured documentation. Manually preparing documents is:
- Labor-Intensive - Scraping, chunking, and formatting takes hours
- Inconsistent - Manual processes lead to quality variations
- Hard to Update - Documentation changes require complete rework
Example:
"When building a LlamaIndex query engine for FastAPI documentation, you need to extract 300+ pages, structure them properly, and maintain consistent metadata. This typically takes 3-5 hours."
Use Skill Seekers as essential preprocessing before LlamaIndex:
- Generate LlamaIndex Nodes from any documentation source
- Pre-structured with IDs and rich metadata
- Ready for indexes (VectorStoreIndex, TreeIndex, KeywordTableIndex)
- One command - complete documentation in minutes
Result: Skill Seekers outputs JSON files with LlamaIndex Node format, ready to build indexes and query engines.
- Python 3.10+
- LlamaIndex installed:
pip install llama-index - OpenAI API key (for embeddings):
export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
# Install Skill Seekers
pip install skill-seekers
# Verify installation
skill-seekers --version# Example: Django framework documentation
skill-seekers scrape --config configs/django.json
# Package as LlamaIndex Nodes
skill-seekers package output/django --target llama-index
# Output: output/django-llama-index.jsonfrom llama_index.core.schema import TextNode
from llama_index.core import VectorStoreIndex
import json
# Load nodes
with open("output/django-llama-index.json") as f:
nodes_data = json.load(f)
# Convert to LlamaIndex Nodes
nodes = [
TextNode(
text=node["text"],
metadata=node["metadata"],
id_=node["id_"]
)
for node in nodes_data
]
print(f"Loaded {len(nodes)} nodes")
# Create index
index = VectorStoreIndex(nodes)
# Create query engine
query_engine = index.as_query_engine()
# Query
response = query_engine.query("How do I create a Django model?")
print(response)Option A: Use Preset Config (Fastest)
# Available presets: django, fastapi, vue, etc.
skill-seekers scrape --config configs/django.jsonOption B: From GitHub Repository
# Scrape from GitHub repo
skill-seekers github --repo django/django --name django-skillOption C: Custom Documentation
# Create custom config
skill-seekers scrape --config configs/my-docs.json# Convert to LlamaIndex Nodes
skill-seekers package output/django --target llama-index
# Output structure:
# output/django-llama-index.json
# [
# {
# "text": "...",
# "metadata": {
# "source": "django",
# "category": "models",
# "file": "models.md"
# },
# "id_": "unique-hash-id",
# "embedding": null
# }
# ]What You Get:
- ✅ Pre-structured nodes with unique IDs
- ✅ Rich metadata (source, category, file, type)
- ✅ Clean text (code blocks preserved)
- ✅ Ready for indexing
from llama_index.core.schema import TextNode
from llama_index.core import VectorStoreIndex, StorageContext
from llama_index.core.storage.docstore import SimpleDocumentStore
from llama_index.core.storage.index_store import SimpleIndexStore
from llama_index.core.vector_stores import SimpleVectorStore
import json
# Load nodes
with open("output/django-llama-index.json") as f:
nodes_data = json.load(f)
nodes = [
TextNode(
text=node["text"],
metadata=node["metadata"],
id_=node["id_"]
)
for node in nodes_data
]
# Create index
index = VectorStoreIndex(nodes)
# Persist for later use
index.storage_context.persist(persist_dir="./storage")
print(f"✅ Index created with {len(nodes)} nodes")Load Persisted Index:
from llama_index.core import load_index_from_storage, StorageContext
# Load from disk
storage_context = StorageContext.from_defaults(persist_dir="./storage")
index = load_index_from_storage(storage_context)
print("✅ Index loaded from storage")Basic Query Engine:
# Create query engine
query_engine = index.as_query_engine(
similarity_top_k=3, # Return top 3 relevant chunks
response_mode="compact"
)
# Query
response = query_engine.query("How do I create a Django model?")
print(response)Chat Engine (Conversational):
from llama_index.core.chat_engine import CondenseQuestionChatEngine
# Create chat engine with memory
chat_engine = index.as_chat_engine(
chat_mode="condense_question",
verbose=True
)
# Chat
response = chat_engine.chat("Tell me about Django models")
print(response)
# Follow-up (maintains context)
response = chat_engine.chat("How do I add fields?")
print(response)Tree Index (For Summarization):
from llama_index.core import TreeIndex
tree_index = TreeIndex(nodes)
query_engine = tree_index.as_query_engine()
# Better for summarization queries
response = query_engine.query("Summarize Django's ORM capabilities")Keyword Table Index (For Keyword Search):
from llama_index.core import KeywordTableIndex
keyword_index = KeywordTableIndex(nodes)
query_engine = keyword_index.as_query_engine()
# Better for keyword-based queries
response = query_engine.query("foreign key relationships")from llama_index.core.vector_stores import MetadataFilters, ExactMatchFilter
# Filter by category
filters = MetadataFilters(
filters=[
ExactMatchFilter(key="category", value="models")
]
)
query_engine = index.as_query_engine(
similarity_top_k=3,
filters=filters
)
# Only searches in "models" category
response = query_engine.query("How do relationships work?")from llama_index.core.retrievers import VectorIndexRetriever
# Custom retriever with specific settings
retriever = VectorIndexRetriever(
index=index,
similarity_top_k=5,
)
# Get source nodes
nodes = retriever.retrieve("django models")
for node in nodes:
print(f"Score: {node.score:.3f}")
print(f"Category: {node.metadata['category']}")
print(f"Text: {node.text[:100]}...\n")# Combine multiple documentation sources
sources = ["django", "fastapi", "flask"]
all_nodes = []
for source in sources:
with open(f"output/{source}-llama-index.json") as f:
nodes_data = json.load(f)
nodes = [
TextNode(
text=node["text"],
metadata=node["metadata"],
id_=node["id_"]
)
for node in nodes_data
]
all_nodes.extend(nodes)
# Create unified index
index = VectorStoreIndex(all_nodes)
print(f"✅ Created index with {len(all_nodes)} nodes from {len(sources)} sources")# Save to avoid re-indexing
index.storage_context.persist(persist_dir="./storage")
# Load when needed
storage_context = StorageContext.from_defaults(persist_dir="./storage")
index = load_index_from_storage(storage_context)query_engine = index.as_query_engine(
streaming=True
)
response = query_engine.query("Explain Django in detail")
for text in response.response_gen:
print(text, end="", flush=True)from llama_index.core.response_synthesizers import ResponseMode
query_engine = index.as_query_engine(
response_mode=ResponseMode.TREE_SUMMARIZE, # Better for long docs
similarity_top_k=5
)import time
start = time.time()
response = query_engine.query("your question")
elapsed = time.time() - start
print(f"Query took {elapsed:.2f}s")
print(f"Used {len(response.source_nodes)} source nodes")Step 1: Generate Nodes
# Scrape FastAPI docs
skill-seekers scrape --config configs/fastapi.json
# Convert to LlamaIndex format
skill-seekers package output/fastapi --target llama-indexStep 2: Build Index and Query Engine
from llama_index.core.schema import TextNode
from llama_index.core import VectorStoreIndex
from llama_index.core.chat_engine import CondenseQuestionChatEngine
import json
# Load nodes
with open("output/fastapi-llama-index.json") as f:
nodes_data = json.load(f)
nodes = [
TextNode(
text=node["text"],
metadata=node["metadata"],
id_=node["id_"]
)
for node in nodes_data
]
# Create index
index = VectorStoreIndex(nodes)
index.storage_context.persist(persist_dir="./fastapi_index")
print(f"✅ FastAPI index created with {len(nodes)} nodes")
# Create chat engine
chat_engine = index.as_chat_engine(
chat_mode="condense_question",
verbose=True
)
# Interactive loop
print("\n🤖 FastAPI Documentation Assistant")
print("Ask me anything about FastAPI (type 'quit' to exit)\n")
while True:
user_input = input("You: ").strip()
if user_input.lower() in ['quit', 'exit', 'q']:
print("👋 Goodbye!")
break
if not user_input:
continue
response = chat_engine.chat(user_input)
print(f"\nAssistant: {response}\n")
# Show sources
print("Sources:")
for node in response.source_nodes:
cat = node.metadata.get('category', 'unknown')
file = node.metadata.get('file', 'unknown')
print(f" - {cat} ({file})")
print()Result:
- Complete FastAPI documentation indexed
- Conversational interface with memory
- Source attribution for transparency
- Instant responses (<1 second)
Solution: Use hybrid indexing or split by category
# Create separate indexes per category
categories = set(node["metadata"]["category"] for node in nodes_data)
indexes = {}
for category in categories:
cat_nodes = [
TextNode(**node)
for node in nodes_data
if node["metadata"]["category"] == category
]
indexes[category] = VectorStoreIndex(cat_nodes)Solution: Reduce similarity_top_k or use caching
query_engine = index.as_query_engine(
similarity_top_k=2, # Reduce from 3 to 2
)Solution: Install LlamaIndex components
pip install llama-index llama-index-core
pip install llama-index-llms-openai # For OpenAI LLM
pip install llama-index-embeddings-openai # For OpenAI embeddings| Aspect | Manual Process | With Skill Seekers |
|---|---|---|
| Time to Setup | 3-5 hours | 5 minutes |
| Node Structure | Manual, inconsistent | Automatic, structured |
| Metadata | Often missing | Rich, comprehensive |
| IDs | Manual generation | Auto-generated (stable) |
| Maintenance | Re-process everything | Re-run one command |
| Updates | Hours of work | 5 minutes |
- Questions: GitHub Discussions
- Issues: GitHub Issues
- Documentation: https://skillseekersweb.com/
- Twitter: @yUSyUS
- Try the Quick Start above
- Explore different index types (Tree, Keyword, List)
- Build your query engine with production-ready docs
- Share your experience - we'd love feedback!
Last Updated: February 5, 2026 Tested With: LlamaIndex v0.10.0+, OpenAI GPT-4 Skill Seekers Version: v2.9.0+