when should I install the "genai" plugin when build a container?

[liuweie]

I built a container with the neo4j:5.26.0-community-ubi9 image, my goal is to use the embedding vector index and vector search , which is the feature of "GenAI" intergration provided.

I have tested vector embedding 、vector index and the similarity search function by following official tutorial：https://neo4j.com/docs/genai/tutorials/embeddings-vector-indexes/

And I noticed that user need to set the --env NEO4J_PLUGINS='[ "genai"] when build container if user want to use vector embedding function,:

https://neo4j.com/docs/cypher-manual/current/genai-integrations/

however, it seems that there is no need to install the genai plugin , because I did not install it but the embedding vector index and similarity search still work

so, my question is ：when should I install the "genai" plugin? why the vector search still work when I did not install genai?

[datacute]

The genai plugin is needed to call the functions shown in https://neo4j.com/docs/cypher-manual/current/genai-integrations/
For example genai.vector.encode
The vector functions https://neo4j.com/docs/cypher-manual/current/functions/vector/ and vector indexes https://neo4j.com/docs/cypher-manual/current/indexes/syntax/#create-vector-index can be used without the plugin (depending on neo4j version)