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context-kit/docs/troubleshooting.md

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Troubleshooting

Run Doctor

bin/context-kit doctor

This checks Docker, Compose, images, the Docker network, SearXNG health, docs HTTP readiness, and docs source configuration.

For release-grade MCP protocol checks, run:

scripts/release-check

Live provider checks are opt-in because search engines, remote docs, and model downloads can fail independently of this repo:

CONTEXT_KIT_LIVE_CHECKS=1 scripts/release-check

SearXNG Is Not Responding

Start it:

bin/context-kit start

Then check:

curl 'http://127.0.0.1:8099/search?q=test&format=json'

If you changed CONTEXT_KIT_SEARXNG_PORT, use that port instead.

MCP Image Missing

Build default images:

bin/context-kit build

Fetch URL Says Max Download Bytes Is Too Big

If fetch_url fails before making a network request with an MCP validation error like Number must be less than or equal to 26214400, rebuild the web-search MCP image:

bin/context-kit build

Context Kit patches the upstream mcp-web-search schema so the accepted max_download_bytes value matches CONTEXT_KIT_WEB_SEARCH_MAX_BYTES, which defaults to 52428800.

Search Fallback and Chromium

search_web defaults to SearXNG. If SearXNG fails or returns no results, the upstream fallback order is DuckDuckGo, then Bing. Bing uses Chromium through Puppeteer, so bin/context-kit doctor checks that the configured Chromium path exists inside the web-search image.

Context Kit carries a source-controlled Bing provider override in docker/web-search/overrides/bing.js because the upstream 1.3.0 provider can race result rendering and return no items even when Chromium sees Bing result cards. The override waits for result cards and decodes current Bing redirect URLs before handing results back to the upstream fallback registry.

fetch_url is different: in upstream mcp-web-search 1.3.0, engine=browser is accepted but reserved for future support. It does not currently invoke Chromium; URL fetching uses the HTTP extractor path.

Docs Indexing Is Slow

The first docs_query or docs_refresh downloads an embedding model and embeds the requested docs sections lazily. Keep default sources small, and add profiles only when you need them.

Cloudflare and other large docs sets can take significantly longer than the default source profile. Set CONTEXT_KIT_DOCS_PREINDEX=1 only if you want startup to eagerly embed every configured source.

Docs Tools Say Index Manager Not Initialized

If docs_query or docs_refresh returns Index manager not initialized while /status still responds, the HTTP wrapper is up but llms-txt-mcp failed to initialize its embedding model or Chroma database. Check the container logs:

docker compose -p "${CONTEXT_KIT_COMPOSE_PROJECT:-context-kit}" -f compose.yml logs docs-mcp

A common cause is Docker creating the bind-mounted cache directories as root before Context Kit created them as the host user. Look for errors like:

Permission denied: '/models/models--BAAI--bge-small-en-v1.5'
unable to open database file

Fix ownership and restart:

DATA_DIR="${CONTEXT_KIT_DATA_DIR:-${HOME:?Set HOME or CONTEXT_KIT_DATA_DIR}/.local/share/context-kit}"
sudo chown -R "$(id -u):$(id -g)" "$DATA_DIR/docs" "$DATA_DIR/models"
bin/context-kit restart

bin/context-kit start now pre-creates these directories and doctor reports existing directories that are not writable by the current user. If an assistant client reports Session not found after restarting docs-mcp, restart the assistant so it opens a fresh Streamable HTTP MCP session.