Definition
Alembic is the official migration tool for SQLAlchemy. It tracks changes to your database schema in versioned migration files, allowing you to apply, roll back, and auto-generate schema changes from your ORM models. It's the equivalent of Django's `makemigrations` for FastAPI applications.
Why it matters for AI APIs
Without database migration management, schema changes are manual, error-prone, and hard to coordinate across environments. Alembic provides a reproducible migration history that can run in CI, on first deploy, and be rolled back safely — essential for any production application.
In FastAPI AI Kit
Alembic is fully configured with an `env.py` that loads your database URL from environment variables, an initial migration for all core models (users, API keys, jobs, embeddings), and alembic.ini ready to use. Run `alembic upgrade head` or let the startup script handle it.