FAQ / Troubleshooting

1. “Vector search failed” / embeddings not working
2. The index is empty / IndexStatus returns 0
3. Reindexing is slow
4. How do I use a local checkout of the docs instead of downloading from GitHub?
5. Where is the database stored?
6. My question isn’t answered here

“Vector search failed” / embeddings not working

The server falls back to keyword-only search when embeddings can’t be generated. This usually means Ollama isn’t reachable. Check:

curl http://localhost:11434/api/tags

If this fails, start Ollama and make sure it’s listening on http://localhost:11434 (the default). If it’s running but the model is missing:

ollama pull nomic-embed-text

The index is empty / IndexStatus returns 0

You need to run the initial index at least once:

obsidian-docs-mcp index

or ask your agent to call the ReindexDocumentation tool.

Reindexing is slow

Reindexing downloads two full documentation repositories and generates an embedding per section via a local Ollama call — this is CPU/GPU-bound on your machine, not network-bound after the initial download. A few minutes is normal; it only needs to run again when you want fresher docs, not on every search.

Two ways to speed this up:

• On a fresh install, you likely don’t need to reindex at all — the server automatically downloads a prebuilt index on first run (see Setup).
• When you do reindex manually, restrict it to the folders you actually need, e.g. obsidian-docs-mcp index en,es,Sandbox instead of indexing all 32 User Help language folders.

How do I use a local checkout of the docs instead of downloading from GitHub?

Set the Docs__DeveloperDocsPath and/or Docs__UserHelpPath environment variables (double underscore — standard .NET nested-config syntax) to point at local clones of obsidian-developer-docs and obsidian-help. If the path exists on disk, the indexer reads it directly instead of downloading a ZIP.

Note: appsettings.json in the repo isn’t shipped alongside the published tool and isn’t read at runtime — environment variables are the only way to override configuration for an installed dotnet tool install -g build. The same applies to every other setting mentioned in these docs (Database__Path, Docs__UserHelpIncludeFolders, Docs__UsePrebuiltIndex, etc.).

Where is the database stored?

By default, a per-user local app data folder. Override it with the Database__Path environment variable.

My question isn’t answered here

Please open an issue with as much detail as possible (OS, .NET version, Ollama version, steps to reproduce).