# Designing incremental document updates: the interactive scenario

> Make the update as small as the change. Explore hashes, chunk boundaries, and safe publication.

Source: https://genaifieldnotes.com/scenarios/designing-incremental-document-updates/
Written guide: https://genaifieldnotes.com/reading/designing-incremental-document-updates/

A seven step walkthrough of one ingestion pipeline. Each step swaps in a different way of detecting what changed, and the same four events can be fired at every one of them: correct a page, re-export an unchanged file, insert a page, run a migration that emits no event.

## What it is built to show

- Compare normalized content hashes to locate the change. Parsing the full file may still be necessary.
- Rebuild changed chunks and any overlapping neighbors. Refresh dependent summaries separately.
- Stage vector and keyword records, verify visibility, then publish an active version manifest.
- Validate retrieved revisions and cached answers. Retire old records after in-flight queries finish.

The reasoning behind each approach is written up in full at https://genaifieldnotes.com/reading/designing-incremental-document-updates/.