Could not connect to tenant ${tenant}. Are you sure it exist

Error message

Could not connect to tenant ${tenant}. Are you sure it exists? Underlying error:
${error}

What it means

validateTenantDatabase() calls AdminClient.getTenant({ name: tenant }); if it throws anything that is NOT a ChromaConnectionError, the error is wrapped with this message. Because connection-level failures are rethrown untouched, seeing this message means the server WAS reached and answered — almost always that the tenant does not exist (404) on that server.

Source

Thrown at clients/js/packages/chromadb-core/src/utils.ts:69

 * @param {string} moduleName - Specifies the module to import.
 * @returns {Promise<any>} Returns a Promise that resolves to the imported module.
 */
export async function importOptionalModule(moduleName: string) {
  return Function(`return import("${moduleName}")`)();
}

export async function validateTenantDatabase(
  adminClient: AdminClient,
  tenant: string,
  database: string,
): Promise<void> {
  try {
    await adminClient.getTenant({ name: tenant });
  } catch (error) {
    if (error instanceof ChromaConnectionError) {
      throw error;
    }
    throw new Error(
      `Could not connect to tenant ${tenant}. Are you sure it exists? Underlying error:
${error}`,
    );
  }

  try {
    await adminClient.getDatabase({ name: database, tenantName: tenant });
  } catch (error) {
    if (error instanceof ChromaConnectionError) {
      throw error;
    }
    throw new Error(
      `Could not connect to database ${database} for tenant ${tenant}. Are you sure it exists? Underlying error:
${error}`,
    );
  }
}

View on GitHub (pinned to aecdd12c8a)

Solutions

Create the tenant first: await adminClient.createTenant({ name: tenant }) — creating an existing tenant is not an error, so this is safe to run idempotently.
List tenants to verify the exact name: (await adminClient.listTenants()).forEach(t => console.log(t.name)).
Confirm the client points at the server where the tenant was created (path/host/port, auth provider).
Check for typos, case sensitivity, and trailing whitespace in the tenant string.

Example fix

// before
const client = new ChromaClient({ tenant: "acme", database: "prod-db" });
await client.listCollections(); // init() -> getTenant 404 -> throws

// after
const admin = new AdminClient({ path: "http://localhost:8000" });
await admin.createTenant({ name: "acme" });
await admin.createDatabase({ name: "prod-db", tenantName: "acme" });
const client = new ChromaClient({ tenant: "acme", database: "prod-db" });

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

// Ensure the tenant exists before pointing a client at it
const ensureTenant = async (admin: AdminClient, tenant: string) => {
  try {
    await admin.getTenant({ name: tenant });
  } catch (e) {
    if (e instanceof ChromaConnectionError) throw e; // server unreachable — different problem
    await admin.createTenant({ name: tenant }); // 404 -> create idempotently
  }
};
await ensureTenant(admin, "acme");

Try / catch

try {
  await client.listCollections(); // triggers init()/tenant validation
} catch (e) {
  const msg = e instanceof Error ? e.message : String(e);
  if (msg.startsWith("Could not connect to tenant")) {
    throw new Error(`Tenant not found — run adminClient.createTenant({ name: tenant }) first`, { cause: e });
  }
  throw e;
}

Prevention

Make tenant creation part of deployment scripts (createTenant is idempotent) before any ChromaClient uses the tenant.
Keep server host/port in one shared config so dev/prod never point at different Chroma instances with divergent tenants.
Validate tenant names at config load time (typos, case, whitespace) before constructing clients.

When it happens

Trigger: new ChromaClient({ tenant: 'acme', database: 'db' }) (validated on first init()/operation), adminClient.setTenant({ tenant: 'acme', database: 'db' }), or adminClient.setDatabase() where tenant 'acme' was never created with adminClient.createTenant({ name: 'acme' }) — or exists on a different server (wrong host/port).

Common situations: First use of multi-tenant mode assuming tenants auto-create; typo/case difference in the tenant name; connecting to default localhost:8000 in prod while the tenant lives on another instance; load-balanced Chroma instances with divergent state.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of chroma-core/chroma@aecdd12c8a (2026-08-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/c365cab1b032f741. Report an issue: GitHub.