My real icky feeling is the layering on of postgres plugins to get a search solution to work.

Ok yeah there's PGVector. Then you need something to do full text search. And if you put all that together, you have a complex Postgres deployment.

It seems to make sense for simple operations, but I'd rather just get a search engine / vector database, than try to twist Postgres's arm into a weird setup.

> do full text search. And if you put all that together, you have a complex Postgres deployment.

search is also just extension? So, its a strong point: you have one self-contained server with simple installation/maintenance story.