external-collection

name	external-collection
description	Use when the user wants to trigger, describe, or list refresh jobs for an external collection (a collection backed by an external data source such as Vector Lake). Note this is the data-plane refresh workflow, not collection CRUD -- for create/drop/load see the collection skill.

Prerequisites

1. CLI installed, logged in, and cluster context set (see setup skill).
2. The target collection must already exist as an external collection (created with an externalSource / externalSpec schema in the collection skill). Plain in-place collections do not have refresh jobs.
3. The cluster must be running a kite-coordinator build that exposes /v2/vectordb/jobs/external_collection/* (PR #5735 or later). On older data planes the API returns 404 -- in that case ask the user to upgrade the cluster.

Commands Reference

The external-collection resource has a single operation, refresh, with three actions: trigger, describe, and list. All three are data-plane calls and inherit the database from the current context unless overridden with --database.

Trigger a refresh job

zilliz external-collection refresh trigger --name <collection-name>
# Optional:
#   --database <db-name>          Override the context database
#   --external-source <src>       Override the external source registered on the collection
#   --external-spec <spec>        Override the external spec registered on the collection

trigger returns the new jobId. Use it with refresh describe to poll status. The override flags are intentionally rare -- normally the source and spec are pinned at collection-create time, and a plain is enough.