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How Chroma’s scores are calculated

The full audit trail, recomputed from the verdict data at build time through the same code that produced the leaderboard: verdict × quality × story weight per cell, cells sum to dimension scores, dimensions blend into the PA Score. Every number on the product page is reproducible from this page alone; for why the formula looks like this, see the methodology.

verdict factors: full ×1.0 · partial ×0.6 · disputed ×0.3 · none ×0.0 · n/a excluded from both sides · cell points = weight × quality × factor · cell max = weight × 10

PA Score41/100

Agent-ready 54.8 × 0.30 = 16.44

API quality 37.7 × 0.20 = 7.54

Openness 60.0 × 0.20 = 12.00

Built-in AI 10.3 × 0.15 = 1.55

Automation 24.0 × 0.15 = 3.60

(16.44 + 7.54 + 12.00 + 1.55 + 3.60) ÷ (0.30 + 0.20 + 0.20 + 0.15 + 0.15) = 41.13 ÷ 1.00 = 41.1

Scores are stored to 1 decimal; the product page’s pills round to whole numbers for display. Each dimension below shows the stories, verdicts, and cited evidence behind its number.

Agent-ready54.8/100×0.30 of the PA blend

Outside-in: can YOUR agent reach and drive this product — API, MCP, CLI, headless runs, agent docs.

Point an agent at llms.txt or agent-oriented docsweight 2

2 (weight) × 8 (quality) × 1.0 (full) = 16.0 of 20 max

  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/llms.txt“PROBE llms.txt: HTTP 200 at https://docs.trychroma.com/llms.txt # Chroma Docs - [Introduction](https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/introduction.md): Chroma is the open-source dat”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/getting-started“Give the following prompt to Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or your favorite AI agent. It will quickly set you up with Chroma.”

Run the product headlessly / in CI for automationweight 2

2 (weight) × 6 (quality) × 0.6 (partial) = 7.2 of 20 max

  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com“Chroma is licensed under Apache 2.0. Run it locally, self-host, or use Chroma Cloud for a managed, serverless experience.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com“Run it locally, self-host, or use Chroma Cloud for a managed, serverless experience.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“Install the Chroma CLI to run a local server, browse collections, and interact with Chroma Cloud.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“The Chroma CLI lets you run a Chroma server locally on your machine, install sample apps, browse your collections, interact with your Chroma Cloud DBs”
  • [github] https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma“Create a DB and try it out in under 30 seconds with $5 of free credits.”
  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“official CLI documented at https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install”

Plug MCP servers into this product so it can use their toolsweight 3

n/a — not applicable to this product: excluded from numerator and denominator

  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp“The Chroma MCP server allows Claude to directly interact with Chroma’s search capabilities through this standardized protocol.”
  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp“official MCP server documented at https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp“The Chroma MCP server allows Claude to directly interact with Chroma's search capabilities through this standardized protocol. This enables powerful features like: Persistent memory across conversations”

Connect an agent via an official MCP serverweight 3

3 (weight) × 8 (quality) × 1.0 (full) = 24.0 of 30 max

  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp“The Chroma MCP server allows Claude to directly interact with Chroma’s search capabilities through this standardized protocol.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp“The Chroma MCP server allows Claude to directly interact with Chroma's search capabilities through this standardized protocol. This enables powerful features like: Persistent memory across conversations”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp“Persistent memory across conversations”
  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp“official MCP server documented at https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp”

Use an official CLIweight 2

2 (weight) × 8 (quality) × 1.0 (full) = 16.0 of 20 max

  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“Install the Chroma CLI to run a local server, browse collections, and interact with Chroma Cloud.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“The Chroma CLI lets you run a Chroma server locally on your machine, install sample apps, browse your collections, interact with your Chroma Cloud DBs”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“The Chroma CLI lets you run a Chroma server locally on your machine, install sample apps, browse your collections, interact with your Chroma Cloud DBs, and much more!”
  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“official CLI documented at https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install”

Drive the product through a documented public APIweight 3

3 (weight) × 9 (quality) × 1.0 (full) = 27.0 of 30 max

  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/openapi.json“PROBE openapi: HTTP 200 at https://docs.trychroma.com/openapi.json — contains "openapi" key”
  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/llms.txt“PROBE llms.txt: HTTP 200 at https://docs.trychroma.com/llms.txt # Chroma Docs - [Introduction](https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/introduction.md): Chroma is the open-source dat”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/getting-started“Give the following prompt to Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or your favorite AI agent. It will quickly set you up with Chroma.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“Install the Chroma CLI to run a local server, browse collections, and interact with Chroma Cloud.”
  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“official CLI documented at https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/getting-started“You can query the collection with a list of query texts, and Chroma will return the n most similar results.”

Issue scoped/least-privilege API credentials for an agentweight 2

2 (weight) × 0 (quality) × 0.0 (none) = 0.0 of 20 max

no evidence cited — the verdict rests on absence of evidence, re-checked on refresh

Build against official SDKsweight 2

2 (weight) × 7 (quality) × 0.6 (partial) = 8.4 of 20 max

  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/getting-started“Chroma will store your text and handle embedding and indexing automatically.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/getting-started“You can query the collection with a list of query texts, and Chroma will return the n most similar results.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com“Use any embedding model. OpenAI, Cohere, Hugging Face, sentence-transformers, and more.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/getting-started“In this directory create a new Python project with Chroma set up. Use a virtual environment.”
  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/openapi.json“PROBE openapi: HTTP 200 at https://docs.trychroma.com/openapi.json — contains "openapi" key”
  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“official CLI documented at https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/getting-started“Give the following prompt to Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or your favorite AI agent. It will quickly set you up with Chroma.”

Subscribe to events via webhooksweight 2

2 (weight) × 0 (quality) × 0.0 (none) = 0.0 of 20 max

no evidence cited — the verdict rests on absence of evidence, re-checked on refresh

Agent-ready = 98.6 ÷ 180 × 100 = 54.8

API quality37.7/100×0.20 of the PA blend

The programmable surface once an agent is there — machine-readable spec, interactive docs, sandbox, versioning discipline.

Explore an interactive API reference with runnable examplesweight 2

2 (weight) × 4 (quality) × 0.6 (partial) = 4.8 of 20 max

  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/openapi.json“PROBE openapi: HTTP 200 at https://docs.trychroma.com/openapi.json — contains "openapi" key”
  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/llms.txt“PROBE llms.txt: HTTP 200 at https://docs.trychroma.com/llms.txt # Chroma Docs - [Introduction](https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/introduction.md): Chroma is the open-source dat”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/getting-started“Chroma will store your text and handle embedding and indexing automatically.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/getting-started“In this directory create a new Python project with Chroma set up. Use a virtual environment.”

Download a machine-readable API spec (OpenAPI or equivalent)weight 2

2 (weight) × 9 (quality) × 1.0 (full) = 18.0 of 20 max

  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/openapi.json“PROBE openapi: HTTP 200 at https://docs.trychroma.com/openapi.json — contains "openapi" key”
  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/llms.txt“PROBE llms.txt: HTTP 200 at https://docs.trychroma.com/llms.txt # Chroma Docs - [Introduction](https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/introduction.md): Chroma is the open-source dat”

Test against a sandbox environment without touching production dataweight 1

1 (weight) × 6 (quality) × 0.6 (partial) = 3.6 of 10 max

  • [claimed-docs] https://www.trychroma.com“Forking Dataset versioning, A/B testing, and roll-outs”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/cloud/pricing“Forks are copy-on-write. You only pay for incremental storage written after the fork; unchanged data remains shared.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/cloud/pricing“Forking a collection costs $0.03 per fork request. Forks are copy-on-write. You only pay for incremental storage written after the fork; unchanged data remains shared.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com“Chroma is licensed under Apache 2.0. Run it locally, self-host, or use Chroma Cloud for a managed, serverless experience.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com“Run it locally, self-host, or use Chroma Cloud for a managed, serverless experience.”
  • [community] https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/44944241“Chroma has built in regex+trigram search and copy-on-write forking of indexes. this feature combo is killer for the code-search use case.”

Rely on versioned APIs with a documented deprecation policyweight 2

2 (weight) × 0 (quality) × 0.0 (none) = 0.0 of 20 max

no evidence cited — the verdict rests on absence of evidence, re-checked on refresh

API quality = 26.4 ÷ 70 × 100 = 37.7

Openness60.0/100×0.20 of the PA blend

Can you leave, inspect, or self-host — data export, open source, portability.

Do everything through the API that I can do in the UIweight 2

2 (weight) × 5 (quality) × 0.6 (partial) = 6.0 of 20 max

  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/openapi.json“PROBE openapi: HTTP 200 at https://docs.trychroma.com/openapi.json — contains "openapi" key”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“Install the Chroma CLI to run a local server, browse collections, and interact with Chroma Cloud.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“The Chroma CLI lets you run a Chroma server locally on your machine, install sample apps, browse your collections, interact with your Chroma Cloud DBs”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com“Chroma is licensed under Apache 2.0. Run it locally, self-host, or use Chroma Cloud for a managed, serverless experience.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/cloud/pricing“Forking a collection costs $0.03 per fork request. Forks are copy-on-write. You only pay for incremental storage written after the fork; unchanged data remains shared.”

Export all of my data in open formats and leaveweight 3

3 (weight) × 5 (quality) × 0.6 (partial) = 9.0 of 30 max

  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com“Chroma is licensed under Apache 2.0. Run it locally, self-host, or use Chroma Cloud for a managed, serverless experience.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com“Run it locally, self-host, or use Chroma Cloud for a managed, serverless experience.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“The Chroma CLI lets you run a Chroma server locally on your machine, install sample apps, browse your collections, interact with your Chroma Cloud DBs, and much more!”
  • [community] https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/44944241“Why does it say open source but then try to charge me money (re: Chroma Cloud vs self-hosted OSS Apache 2.0 licensed core).”

Read the product's source under an open licenseweight 2

2 (weight) × 9 (quality) × 1.0 (full) = 18.0 of 20 max

  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com“Chroma is licensed under Apache 2.0. Run it locally, self-host, or use Chroma Cloud for a managed, serverless experience.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com“Run it locally, self-host, or use Chroma Cloud for a managed, serverless experience.”
  • [github] https://github.com/chroma-core/chroma“Create a DB and try it out in under 30 seconds with $5 of free credits.”
  • [community] https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/44944241“Why does it say open source but then try to charge me money (re: Chroma Cloud vs self-hosted OSS Apache 2.0 licensed core).”

Self-host the core productweight 3

3 (weight) × 9 (quality) × 1.0 (full) = 27.0 of 30 max

  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com“Chroma is licensed under Apache 2.0. Run it locally, self-host, or use Chroma Cloud for a managed, serverless experience.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com“Run it locally, self-host, or use Chroma Cloud for a managed, serverless experience.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“Install the Chroma CLI to run a local server, browse collections, and interact with Chroma Cloud.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“The Chroma CLI lets you run a Chroma server locally on your machine, install sample apps, browse your collections, interact with your Chroma Cloud DBs, and much more!”
  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install“official CLI documented at https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/cli/install”
  • [community] https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/44944241“Why does it say open source but then try to charge me money (re: Chroma Cloud vs self-hosted OSS Apache 2.0 licensed core).”

Openness = 60.0 ÷ 100 × 100 = 60.0

Built-in AI10.3/100×0.15 of the PA blend

Inside-out: how agentic the product itself is for its users — built-in assistants, autonomous features.

Get AI-generated insights and suggestions from my data inside the productweight 2

2 (weight) × 0 (quality) × 0.0 (none) = 0.0 of 20 max

no evidence cited — the verdict rests on absence of evidence, re-checked on refresh

Set up automations that run autonomously in the backgroundweight 2

n/a — not applicable to this product: excluded from numerator and denominator

no evidence cited — the verdict rests on absence of evidence, re-checked on refresh

Delegate tasks to a built-in AI assistant inside the productweight 3

3 (weight) × 0 (quality) × 0.0 (none) = 0.0 of 30 max

no evidence cited — the verdict rests on absence of evidence, re-checked on refresh

Operate the product with natural-language commandsweight 2

2 (weight) × 6 (quality) × 0.6 (partial) = 7.2 of 20 max

  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp“The Chroma MCP server allows Claude to directly interact with Chroma’s search capabilities through this standardized protocol.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp“The Chroma MCP server allows Claude to directly interact with Chroma's search capabilities through this standardized protocol. This enables powerful features like: Persistent memory across conversations”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/getting-started“Give the following prompt to Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or your favorite AI agent. It will quickly set you up with Chroma.”
  • [probe] https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp“official MCP server documented at https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/integrations/frameworks/anthropic-mcp“Persistent memory across conversations”

Built-in AI = 7.2 ÷ 70 × 100 = 10.3

Automation24.0/100×0.15 of the PA blend

Depth of automation primitives — rules, scheduling, bulk operations, webhooks.

Perform bulk operations across many items at onceweight 2

2 (weight) × 6 (quality) × 0.6 (partial) = 7.2 of 20 max

  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/overview/getting-started“You can query the collection with a list of query texts, and Chroma will return the n most similar results.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/querying-collections/full-text-search“We support full-text search with the $contains and $not_contains operators. We also support regular expression pattern matching with the $regex and $not_regex operators.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/docs/querying-collections/full-text-search“.get and .query can handle where_document search combined with metadata filtering”
  • [claimed-docs] https://www.trychroma.com“Forking Dataset versioning, A/B testing, and roll-outs”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/cloud/pricing“Forks are copy-on-write. You only pay for incremental storage written after the fork; unchanged data remains shared.”
  • [claimed-docs] https://docs.trychroma.com/cloud/pricing“Forking a collection costs $0.03 per fork request. Forks are copy-on-write. You only pay for incremental storage written after the fork; unchanged data remains shared.”

Define rules that trigger actions automatically on eventsweight 3

n/a — not applicable to this product: excluded from numerator and denominator

no evidence cited — the verdict rests on absence of evidence, re-checked on refresh

Schedule recurring jobs or workflowsweight 2

n/a — not applicable to this product: excluded from numerator and denominator

no evidence cited — the verdict rests on absence of evidence, re-checked on refresh

Version, review, and roll back my automationsweight 1

1 (weight) × 0 (quality) × 0.0 (none) = 0.0 of 10 max

no evidence cited — the verdict rests on absence of evidence, re-checked on refresh

Automation = 7.2 ÷ 30 × 100 = 24.0