Chroma has joined Replit and is closing Chroma Cloud. If the knowledge behind your WordPress chatbot lives there, it stops updating on December 7 and stops answering on December 22. For most sites, moving takes a few minutes, and nothing on the WordPress side is lost. I’ll keep this page updated as things move.
In 30 seconds
- December 7, 2026: Chroma Cloud becomes read-only. You can’t add or update knowledge anymore.
- December 22, 2026: Chroma Cloud stops answering. A chatbot that relies on it loses its knowledge.
- Self-hosted Chroma (the open-source version) is not affected.
- In AI Engine, create a new knowledge environment, fill it from your posts and an export of the old one, then switch your chatbot to it. Do it before December 7.
What’s happening, and when
On October 23, Chroma announced that it is joining Replit and winding down Chroma Cloud. Two dates matter:
- December 7, 2026: Chroma Cloud turns read-only. Your existing knowledge still answers, but nothing new can be added, and edits fail.
- December 22, 2026: reads stop too. Anything still on Chroma Cloud is gone for your chatbot.
Some articles in October mentioned November 22. The official dates are December 7 and December 22. The open-source Chroma you run on your own server keeps working, and stays under the Apache 2.0 licence. Chroma’s own embedding service (the Qwen3 embeddings you can pick in Chroma Cloud) is part of Chroma Cloud: Chroma hasn’t given it a separate date, so treat it as closing too.
Are you affected?
In WordPress, go to AI Engine → Knowledge and look at your environments. If one is of type Chroma and its Server field is empty or contains trychroma.com, it’s Chroma Cloud. Our own chatbot here on meowapps.com uses it too, so we’re moving with you.
The good news: nothing is lost on the WordPress side. AI Engine keeps the text of every knowledge entry in your own database. Only the vectors (the numbers that make search work) live in Chroma, and those can be rebuilt.
How to move, step by step
- Create a new environment in AI Engine → Knowledge. Internal (your WordPress database) is the easiest: no account and no API key.
- Fill it with your posts and pages: run Sync on the new environment, and it re-creates them.
- Bring your manual entries and PDFs: export the old environment to JSON, then import that file into the new one. The embeddings are created again on the way.
- If you used Chroma’s Qwen3 embeddings, set the new environment to use an embeddings model from your AI provider instead (OpenAI, for example), since Chroma’s embedding service is part of Chroma Cloud and should be treated as closing too. Everything is embedded once, which costs a few cents for most sites.
- Switch your chatbot to the new environment, then ask it a few questions you know the answers to.
Do it before December 7 if you can. After that, the old environment can still be read, but not changed, which makes a clean move harder.
Which database should you pick?
- Internal (WordPress database): nothing outside your site, no account, no key. Comfortable up to a few thousand entries, and still fine up to about 20,000; beyond that, use an external database. My recommendation for most sites.
- Pinecone: the most used external database in AI Engine, serverless, with a free starter plan.
- Qdrant: open source, with a free cloud tier and an EU region, and you can host it yourself.
- Chroma, self-hosted: keeps working if you run your own Chroma server.
- OpenAI Vector Store: the simplest if you only use OpenAI, but it ties your knowledge to OpenAI.
What’s next
An AI Engine update before December 7 will warn Chroma Cloud users and make the move easier. I’ll update this article as soon as it’s out, and with anything else we learn along the way. If you get stuck, the AI Engine documentation has the details on each database.
