Grepai Troubleshooting

# GrepAI Troubleshooting

This skill provides solutions for common GrepAI issues and diagnostic procedures.

## When to Use This Skill

- GrepAI not working as expected
- Search returning poor results
- Index not updating
- Connection or configuration errors

## Quick Diagnostics

Run these commands to understand your setup:

```bash
# Check GrepAI version
grepai version

# Check project status
grepai status

# Check Ollama (if using)
curl http://localhost:11434/api/tags

# Check config
cat .grepai/config.yaml
```

## Common Issues

---

### Issue: "Index not found"

**Symptom:**
```
Error: Index not found. Run 'grepai watch' first.
```

**Cause:** No index has been created for this project.

**Solution:**
```bash
# Initialize if needed
grepai init

# Create the index
grepai watch
```

---

### Issue: "Cannot connect to embedding provider"

**Symptom:**
```
Error: Cannot connect to Ollama at http://localhost:11434
```

**Causes:**
1. Ollama not running
2. Wrong endpoint configured
3. Firewall blocking connection

**Solutions:**

1. Start Ollama:
```bash
ollama serve
```

2. Check endpoint in config:
```yaml
embedder:
  endpoint: http://localhost:11434  # Verify this
```

3. Test connection:
```bash
curl http://localhost:11434/api/tags
```

---

### Issue: "Model not found"

**Symptom:**
```
Error: Model 'nomic-embed-text' not found
```

**Cause:** The embedding model hasn't been downloaded.

**Solution:**
```bash
# Download the model
ollama pull nomic-embed-text

# Verify
ollama list
```

---

### Issue: Search returns no results

**Symptom:** Searches return empty or very few results.

**Causes:**
1. Index is empty
2. Files are being ignored
3. Query too specific

**Solutions:**

1. Check index status:
```bash
grepai status
# Should show files > 0 and chunks > 0
```

2. Verify files are being indexed:
```bash
# Check ignore patterns in config
cat .grepai/config.yaml | grep -A 20 "ignore:"
```

3. Try broader query:
```bash
grepai search "function"  # Very broad test
```

---

### Issue: Search returns irrelevant results

**Symptom:** Results don't match what you're looking for.

**Causes:**
1. Query too vague
2. Boosting not configured
3. Wrong content indexed

**Solutions:**

1. Improve query (see `grepai-search-tips` skill):
```bash
# Bad
grepai search "auth"

# Good
grepai search "user authentication middleware"
```

2. Configure boosting to penalize tests:
```yaml
search:
  boost:
    enabled: true
    penalties:
      - pattern: /tests/
        factor: 0.5
```

3. Check what's indexed:
```bash
grepai status
```

---

### Issue: Index is outdated

**Symptom:** Recent file changes aren't appearing in search results.

**Causes:**
1. Watch daemon not running
2. Debounce delay
3. File not in indexed extensions

**Solutions:**

1. Check daemon status:
```bash
grepai watch --status
```

2. Restart daemon:
```bash
grepai watch --stop
grepai watch --background
```

3. Force re-index:
```bash
rm .grepai/index.gob
grepai watch
```

---

### Issue: "Config not found"

**Symptom:**
```
Error: Config file not found at .grepai/config.yaml
```

**Cause:** GrepAI not initialized in this directory.

**Solution:**
```bash
grepai init
```

---

### Issue: Slow indexing

**Symptom:** Initial indexing takes very long.

**Causes:**
1. Large codebase
2. Slow embedding provider
3. Not enough ignore patterns

**Solutions:**

1. Add ignore patterns:
```yaml
ignore:
  - node_modules
  - vendor
  - dist
  - build
  - "*.min.js"
```

2. Use faster model:
```yaml
embedder:
  model: nomic-embed-text  # Smaller, faster
```

3. Use OpenAI for speed (if privacy allows):
```yaml
embedder:
  provider: openai
  model: text-embedding-3-small
  parallelism: 8
```

---

### Issue: Slow searches

**Symptom:** Search queries take several seconds.

**Causes:**
1. Very large index
2. GOB storage on large codebase
3. Embedding provid