> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://getalchemystai.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Amazon S3

> Connect Amazon S3 to your Alchemyst context layer

## Introduction

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is the industry-standard object storage platform, commonly used for document archives, media libraries, data lakes, and backups.

With Alchemyst's [Amazon S3 integration](https://platform.getalchemystai.com/integrations?utm_source=getalchemystai.com\&utm_campaign=docs\&utm_medium=web), you can sync entire buckets, search semantically across documents and media, and keep your agent's knowledge synchronized with your storage.

Your agent sees files as meaning, not just bytes.

***

## Why Connect Amazon S3?

Traditional file-based workflows break down because:

* Files are scattered across services
* Manual operations are error-prone
* Large files exceed context windows
* There's no way to query across files semantically

With Alchemyst's S3 integration, your files sync directly into your context layer, enabling seamless access to all your stored content.

***

## How to Connect

**Prerequisites:**

* AWS account with S3 access
* S3 bucket with files to sync
* IAM credentials with read permissions

**What You Need:**

* Bucket Name (S3 bucket identifier)
* AWS Access Key ID (IAM user access key)
* AWS Secret Access Key (IAM user secret key)
* Region (AWS region, e.g., `us-east-1`)
* Prefix/Folder (optional path filter)

***

## What Gets Indexed

Alchemyst can index:

**Documents:**

* PDF, DOCX, PPTX, TXT, MD

**Data:**

* CSV, JSON, JSONL, XML, Parquet, YAML

**Images:**

* PNG, JPG, SVG (with OCR and vision models)

**Code:**

* All text-based source files

***

## IAM Permissions

Create a dedicated IAM user with read-only S3 access. Grant only the following permissions to the specific buckets you want to sync:

* `s3:GetObject` - Read objects from the bucket
* `s3:ListBucket` - List objects in the bucket

**Example IAM Policy:**

```json theme={null}
{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "s3:GetObject",
        "s3:ListBucket"
      ],
      "Resource": [
        "arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name",
        "arn:aws:s3:::your-bucket-name/*"
      ]
    }
  ]
}
```

***

## Security Best Practices

For Amazon S3 integrations:

* Use IAM roles instead of access keys when possible
* Grant only read-only permissions
* Enable bucket encryption (SSE-S3 or SSE-KMS)
* Restrict public access to sensitive buckets
* Use HTTPS-only access policies
* Enable S3 access logging to monitor activity
* Rotate credentials regularly
* Use bucket policies to enforce encryption in transit
* Enable versioning for critical data

***

## Performance & Cost Optimization

**Sync Strategies:**

* **Full Sync:** For small buckets with static content
* **Incremental Sync:** For large buckets with frequent updates
* **Event-Driven:** For real-time updates using S3 event notifications

**Cost Reduction:**

* Use S3 Intelligent-Tiering for infrequent access
* Set lifecycle policies to archive old files
* Limit sync frequency for static content
* Use prefix filters to avoid listing entire buckets
* Filter by file type to exclude unnecessary files
* Monitor data transfer costs and optimize accordingly

***

## Prefix Filtering

Use the Prefix/Folder field to sync only specific directories within your bucket:

* Leave empty to sync the entire bucket
* Use `documents/` to sync only the documents folder
* Use `data/2024/` to sync a specific year's data
* Combine with file type filters for precise control

***

## Next Steps

Once Amazon S3 is connected, you can:

* Search across your files semantically
* Combine cloud storage with databases and other sources
* Enable real-time sync with webhooks
* Process multimodal content (PDFs, images, CSVs, JSON)

Explore other integrations: [Databases](/integrations/data-sources/databases) or [Productivity & Documents](/integrations/data-sources/docs).