lance-format

# Lance v13 reference Lance is an open columnar format for multimodal AI - "a columnar data format that is 100x faster than Parquet for random access." It is not one format but a stack of interoperating specs: a **file format**, a **table format**, **index formats**, **catalog specs**, and a **namespace client spec**. The Rust workspace at `lance-format/lance` implements all of them plus Python (`pylance`) and Java bindings. This skill tracks **`v13.0.0-beta.4`** (the `lance-format/lance` git tag), the current development frontier; **`v12.0.0`** is the stable pin, released 2026-09-17. Pin against tags, not `main` - Lance ships beta tags every few days and `next`-format encodings can change. Version landscape below. Three layers of reference, load what the task needs: - **The deep reference** - any concrete schema, parameter, proto, or constraint. Split by topic: | File in `references/` | Covers | Sections | |------|--------|----------| | `format-file.md` | What Lance is, the 26 crates, file format, data types | 1-4 | | `format-table.md` | Dataset layout, manifests, fragments, schema evolution, versioning/tags/branches, row IDs, transactions + OCC, MemWAL | 5-10 | | `indexes.md` | Vector / scalar / FTS / geo indexes, distributed builds | 11-12 | | `ops.md` | Object store, capability matrix, source map | 13, 15, 16 | | `changelog-v7-v13.md` | The full v7 -> v13 delta | 14 | Cross-references written as "section N" resolve through `references/lance-reference...