How do you inspect a ChromaDB collection's contents and configuration?

ChromaDB provides several methods to examine what is stored in a collection — useful for debugging, verifying ingestion, and monitoring collection health.

import chromadb

client = chromadb.PersistentClient(path="./inspect_demo")
col = client.get_or_create_collection(
    "articles",
    metadata={"hnsw:space": "cosine"},
)
col.add(
    documents=[f"Article {i} about topic {i%3}" for i in range(20)],
    metadatas=[{"topic": i%3, "idx": i} for i in range(20)],
    ids=[f"art-{i}" for i in range(20)],
)

# 1. Count documents
print(col.count())  # 20

# 2. Peek — quick look at first n items (default n=10)
peek = col.peek(limit=5)
print(peek["ids"])        # first 5 IDs
print(peek["documents"])  # first 5 documents

# 3. Get all (careful with large collections!)
all_items = col.get()
print(len(all_items["ids"]))  # 20

# 4. Get a page of results (offset-based)
page = col.get(
    limit=5,
    offset=10,  # skip first 10
)
print(page["ids"])  # art-10 through art-14

# 5. Inspect collection metadata and config
print(col.name)      # "articles"
print(col.id)        # UUID
print(col.metadata)  # {"hnsw:space": "cosine"}

# 6. List all collections
for c in client.list_collections():
    print(c)  # prints collection name

# 7. Check if a document exists by ID
result = col.get(ids=["art-5"])
if result["ids"]:
    print("Found:", result["documents"][0])
else:
    print("Not found")