search-index-management

name	search-index-management
description	Create, configure, and manage Elasticsearch indices — mappings, settings, templates, data streams, and lifecycle policies.

Search & Index Management

Help users design and manage Elasticsearch indices for optimal search performance.

Trigger

Use when the user asks to:

• "Create an index"
• "Set up mappings"
• "Configure index settings"
• "Create an index template"
• "Set up a data stream"
• "Manage index lifecycle"
• "Reindex data"
• "Design my index"

Also activates on keywords: "mappings", "index template", "ILM", "data stream", "reindex", "analyzer", "tokenizer"

Do NOT use when:

• User wants to query existing data (→ use esql_query or elasticsearch_api directly)
• User wants semantic/vector search setup (→ see vector-search rule, but this skill handles the index creation part)

Tools Used

• get_cluster_context — Cluster orientation, version, and existing indices
• elasticsearch_api — Index CRUD, mappings, settings, templates, ILM
• esql_query — Validate data after indexing
• discover_data — Discover existing indices and data patterns
• get_data_summary — Understand existing data for migration or redesign

Workflow

Step 0: Orient

Call get_cluster_context for cluster version and capabilities.

Step 1: Understand Requirements

Ask about:

• Data type (logs, metrics, application data, search content, time-series)
• Query patterns (full-text search, filtering, aggregations, vector search)
• Volume and retention (daily volume, how long to keep data)
• Update frequency (append-only vs frequent updates)

Step 2: Choose Index Strategy

Use Case	Strategy
Time-series data (logs, metrics, events)	Data stream with ILM
Application/reference data	Regular index
Search content with evolving schema	Index template + aliases
Multi-tenant data	Index per tenant or filtered aliases

Step 3: Design Mappings

Use elasticsearch_api to create the index with optimized mappings:

• Use keyword for exact match / aggregations, text for full-text search
• Use date with appropriate format for timestamps
• Use semantic_text for vector/semantic search fields
• Set index: false on fields that don't need searching
• Use object vs nested deliberately (nested is expensive)

Step 4: Configure Settings

• Shard count: 1 for < 50GB, scale based on data size
• Replicas: 1 for production, 0 for dev/test
• Refresh interval: 1s default, increase for bulk-heavy workloads
• Custom analyzers for language-specific or domain-specific search

Step 5: Set Up Lifecycle (if time-series)

Create ILM policy via elasticsearch_api:

• Hot → Warm → Cold → Delete phases
• Rollover conditions (max age, max size, max docs)
• Force merge in warm phase for storage optimization

Step 6: Validate

• Index a sample document via elasticsearch_api
• Query it back with esql_query to verify mappings behave as expected
• Check _mapping endpoint to confirm dynamic fields mapped correctly

Output Format

• Start with the recommended strategy and rationale
• Provide the complete index creation request as a JSON code block
• Include ILM policy if time-series
• Show a sample document and query to validate
• Suggest monitoring and maintenance tasks

Prerequisites

• ES_URL and ES_API_KEY (or ES_USERNAME/ES_PASSWORD) configured
• Connected Elasticsearch cluster (use cluster-onboarding skill if starting from scratch)

Interactive Dashboard

Interactive Dashboard: When using Claude Desktop or other ext-apps hosts, manage_indices renders an interactive index management dashboard with a visual mapping tree, shard allocation view, and bulk index operations. In Cursor/CLI, it returns markdown.

Related Skills

• cluster-onboarding — If the user doesn't have a cluster yet
• o11y-full-setup — If the index is for O11Y data, use the dedicated setup
• agent-builder-skill-builder — Build custom tools that query the new index