Pinecone Node.js SDK first setup: env key, client, serverless index

# Pinecone Node.js SDK: first working setup

## Install

```
npm install @pinecone-database/pinecone
```

## Authenticate from the environment

```
import { Pinecone } from '@pinecone-database/pinecone';

const pc = new Pinecone();
```

The SDK README shows this as option B: "Instantiate the client using the PINECONE_API_KEY environment variable". Keep the key out of source; the constructor with no arguments is the safe default.

## Create a serverless index

```
await pc.createIndex({
  name: 'quickstart',
  dimension: 1536,
  metric: 'cosine',
  spec: { serverless: { cloud: 'aws', region: 'us-east-1' } },
});
```

`spec` is required. Dimension must equal your embedding model's output width; metric is usually `cosine` for normalized embeddings, `dotproduct` for unnormalized, `euclidean` for the rest. Both are locked at creation.

## Wait, then write

Index creation is asynchronous. Poll `pc.describeIndex('quickstart')` until `status.ready` is true, then:

```
const index = pc.index('quickstart');
await index.upsert([{ id: 'vec1', values: [0.1, 0.2, 0.3] }]);
```

## Traps for agents

1. The package moved from `pinecone-client` (old, v0) to `@pinecone-database/pinecone`. If `npm install pinecone-client` appears in generated code, it is a stale tutorial artifact; use the scoped package.
2. Server code that calls the browser bundle or vice versa: the SDK is isomorphic, but never ship your API key to the browser. Browser-direct calls also hit CORS limits; keep Pinecone calls server-side.
3. Top-level await needs ESM (`"type": "module"`) or an async wrapper. In CommonJS, wrap setup in an async main.