[Bug] v9: no clean way to disable TLS for Pinecone Local; data host forced to https, and docs example fails

[deekshant-w]

Is this a new bug?

• I believe this is a new bug
• I have searched the existing issues, and I could not find an existing issue for this bug

Current Behavior

On v9 there is no clean, documented way to target a Pinecone Local index over plain HTTP.

The data-plane host resolved from pc.indexes.describe(...).host ends up as an https target, and v9 exposes no TLS-off switch (the old GRPCClientConfig(secure=False) and the pinecone.grpc import path were removed in the rewrite).

Pinecone Local serves http only, so the connection fails.

To get it working I have to hand-edit the scheme on the host string before passing it to pc.index(...):

index_info = pc.indexes.describe(...)
data_host = index_info.host #Regardless of whether the original host was http://localhost:5080 or localhost:5080, the host received here is https://localhost:5081

I debugged it to find out that the response received from 'http://localhost:5080/indexes/<index_name>' does not contain any URL scheme. As a result, when IndexModel class is initiated based on the response, the normalize_host function auto forces https on it.

This behaviour has not been documented in the local development docs of python. Although it is covered in the docs of other languages.

Workaround:

data_host  = data_host.replace("https://", "http://")
index = pc.index(host=data_host)

Separately, the official local-dev guide
(https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/operations/local-development) still shows the pre-v9 example from pinecone.grpc import PineconeGRPC, GRPCClientConfig, which raises ImportError: cannot import name 'GRPCClientConfig' from 'pinecone.grpc' on v9.

This I believe could be the reason of the whole thing. In the example GRPCClientConfig(secure=False) must be making sure that SSL is not used. And without it ssl_verify=False set inside pc is not reaching pc.index

pc = Pinecone(api_key="[ENCRYPTION_KEY]", host=_local_host, ssl_verify=False)

Expected Behavior

A supported way to talk to easily talk to local pinecone server, ideally one of:

• a TLS-off option on pc.index(...) (a v9 equivalent of secure=False), or
• the client auto-using http when the host is localhost / 127.0.0.1, or
• ssl_verify=False auto reaching pc.index thus forcing normalize_host to enforce http instead of https
• at minimum, documentation of this issue on https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/operations/local-development (Python version) so others trying out the example as is do not have to waste their time debugging this.

I should not have to mutate the internal host value to pick a scheme. Even if I have to someone should let me know.
The port of getting the index is different too, it hits 5081 instead of 5080 so there should be someway to raise this warning as well so that the users facing this issue, upon manually copying the localhost address in both places could get a hint what might be going wrong.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Start Pinecone Local (database emulator) on http://localhost:5080 via Docker.
2. uv add pinecone (pinecone==9.0.1).
3. Run:

from pinecone import Pinecone, ServerlessSpec

LOCAL_HOST = "http://localhost:5080"
INDEX_NAME = "testing"

# 1. client pointed at Pinecone Local
pc = Pinecone(api_key="abcd", host=LOCAL_HOST)

# 2. create the index if missing
if not pc.has_index(INDEX_NAME):
    pc.indexes.create(name=INDEX_NAME,spec=ServerlessSpec(cloud='aws', region="us-east-1"),)

# 3. get the host
info = pc.indexes.describe(name=INDEX_NAME)

# 4. Error at - 
index = pc.index(name=index_name,host=info.host)

4. Connection fails. Replacing/prefixing the scheme to http on info.host is the only way I found to make it work.

# After 3
data_host = info.host.replace("https://", "http://")
index = pc.index(name=index_name, host=data_host)

Relevant log output

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\httpx\_transports\default.py", line 101, in map_httpcore_exceptions
    yield
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\httpx\_transports\default.py", line 250, in handle_request
    resp = self._pool.handle_request(req)
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\httpcore\_sync\connection_pool.py", line 256, in handle_request
    raise exc from None
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\httpcore\_sync\connection_pool.py", line 236, in handle_request
    response = connection.handle_request(
        pool_request.request
    )
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\httpcore\_sync\connection.py", line 101, in handle_request
    raise exc
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\httpcore\_sync\connection.py", line 78, in handle_request
    stream = self._connect(request)
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\httpcore\_sync\connection.py", line 156, in _connect
    stream = stream.start_tls(**kwargs)
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\httpcore\_backends\sync.py", line 154, in start_tls
    with map_exceptions(exc_map):
         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\deeks\AppData\Roaming\uv\python\cpython-3.13-windows-x86_64-none\Lib\contextlib.py", line 162, in __exit__
    self.gen.throw(value)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\httpcore\_exceptions.py", line 14, in map_exceptions
    raise to_exc(exc) from exc
httpcore.ConnectError: [SSL: WRONG_VERSION_NUMBER] wrong version number (_ssl.c:1032)

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\pinecone\_internal\http_client.py", line 511, in post
    response = self._client._transport.handle_request(request)
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\pinecone\_internal\http_client.py", line 165, in handle_request
    raise last_exc
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\pinecone\_internal\http_client.py", line 136, in handle_request
    response = self._transport.handle_request(request)
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\httpx\_transports\default.py", line 249, in handle_request
    with map_httpcore_exceptions():
         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "C:\Users\deeks\AppData\Roaming\uv\python\cpython-3.13-windows-x86_64-none\Lib\contextlib.py", line 162, in __exit__
    self.gen.throw(value)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\httpx\_transports\default.py", line 118, in map_httpcore_exceptions
    raise mapped_exc(message) from exc
httpx.ConnectError: [SSL: WRONG_VERSION_NUMBER] wrong version number (_ssl.c:1032)

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<frozen runpy>", line 198, in _run_module_as_main
  File "<frozen runpy>", line 88, in _run_code
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Scripts\check.exe\__main__.py", line 10, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
             ~~~~^^
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\src\ssnanopore_rag\embeddingStore.py", line 148, in main
    store.add_embeddings(
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^
        ids=["good", "bad"],
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        documents=["what is DNA sequencing?", "what is CRISPR?"],
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        metadata=[{"title": "DNA Sequencing"}, {"title": "CRISPR"}],
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    )
    ^
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\src\ssnanopore_rag\embeddingStore.py", line 96, in add_embeddings
    self.index.upsert(
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^
        vectors=[
        ^^^^^^^^^
    ...<7 lines>...
        namespace=namespace
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    )
    ^
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\pinecone\_legacy\async_req.py", line 95, in wrapper
    return canonical(*args, **kwargs)
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\pinecone\index\__init__.py", line 275, in upsert
    return self._upsert_one_batch(vectors=vectors, namespace=namespace, timeout=timeout)
           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\pinecone\index\__init__.py", line 335, in _upsert_one_batch
    response = self._http.post("/vectors/upsert", timeout=timeout, json=body)
  File "E:\Projects\SSNanopore_rag\.venv\Lib\site-packages\pinecone\_internal\http_client.py", line 521, in post
    raise PineconeConnectionError(str(exc)) from exc
pinecone.errors.exceptions.PineconeConnectionError: [SSL: WRONG_VERSION_NUMBER] wrong version number (_ssl.c:1032)

Environment

- **OS**: Windows 11 (uv)
- **Language version**: Python 3.13.13
- **Pinecone client version**: 9.0.1

Additional Context

https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/operations/local-development#2-develop-your-app