Fixing a pgvector CI mismatch in a FastAPI RAG backend

This is a submission for DEV's Summer Bug Smash: Clear the Lineup , powered by Sentry . Project Overview mini-agent is a public FastAPI backend for an AI support-agent demo. Its test suite covers API behavior, authentication, rate limiting, approval flows, and PostgreSQL/pgvector-backed retrieval. The GitHub Actions workflow starts PostgreSQL and Redis service containers before running the Python test suite. The application database initialization also executes: CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS vector The dependency is also visible in the DocumentChunk.embedding column, which uses pgvector's Vector type. That made the database image part of the test contract, not just incidental infrastructure. Bug Fix or Performance Improvement On August 12, 2026, the CI run for the preceding commit reached the test step and failed: Failed workflow run Commit tested by that run The workflow was using the general-purpose postgres:17-alpine service image, while the application required the pgvector extension during database initialization. The test environment therefore did not match the database capability required by the code. The failure was specific enough to avoid a broad rewrite: the container initialized successfully, dependency installation passed, and the workflow stopped only at Run tests . That pointed to the application/database boundary rather than the GitHub Actions runner or Python installation. The fix changed one line: services: postgres: - image: postgres:17-alpine + image: pgvector/pgvector:0.8.6-pg17 Full change: Use pgvector image in CI The PostgreSQL major version, credentials, port mapping, health check, application environment, dependency installation, and test command all remained unchanged. This kept the patch narrow and made the CI database expose the same required extension as the application. Code The evidence is a direct before-and-after pair: The preceding workflow failed at Run tests . The one-line database-image commit triggered a new workflow. The new