From March 1 to March 3, 2023, Pinecone experienced a partial database outage that resulted in the inadvertent deletion and subsequent restoration of 515 indexes from its free tier, while indexes on paid plans remained unaffected. The outage was triggered by a bug in a script designed to delete inactive indexes, which incorrectly identified some active indexes as inactive due to an SQL query error. This incident, which bypassed the rigorous deployment processes typically reserved for changes affecting user data, prompted the company to address gaps in its testing and deployment procedures. The CEO of Pinecone took full responsibility and outlined several corrective actions, including enhancing the approval process for data modifications, auditing production system access, and developing more sustainable solutions for managing free-tier infrastructure. The incident highlighted the need for improved testing environments, soft deletion capabilities, and data export features to enhance user trust and data integrity. Pinecone remains committed to learning from this experience, reinforcing its processes, and maintaining transparency with its users.