Slow Indexing

Symptoms

forge index takes more than 2-3 minutes for a typical codebase.
Progress appears to stall with no output for long periods.
forge index --with-embeddings takes considerably longer than indexing alone.

For reference, the Pith monorepo (622 TypeScript/Rust source files) indexes in approximately 2.6 seconds for an incremental run. A full re-index from scratch takes under 10 seconds on modern hardware.

Likely Causes

Cause	Indicator
Large repository with many files	`forge status` shows > 50,000 files
Binary and generated files being indexed	Unusual file types in index
No `.gitignore` in the repository	No automatic exclusions
`--full` flag used unnecessarily	Wipes and rebuilds entire index
Embedding generation active	`--with-embeddings` flag, or slow Ollama
First-time embedding model download	Downloading `nomic-embed-text-v1.5` (~270 MB)

Step-by-Step Fix

Step 1: Check how many files are being indexed

forge status --repo .

Expected output includes a file count. If the count is unexpectedly high (tens of thousands), proceed to Step 2.

Step 2: Add ignored paths to your per-repo config

Create or edit <repo>/.forge/config.toml:

ignored_paths = [
  "dist/",
  "build/",
  ".next/",
  "coverage/",
  "node_modules/",
  "vendor/",
  "generated/",
  "__pycache__/",
  "target/",
  ".cache/",
  "*.min.js",
  "*.bundle.js",
]

Forge already respects .gitignore automatically. Use ignored_paths for directories that exist in your repo but are not in .gitignore.

After adding ignored paths, run a full re-index to apply them:

forge index . --full --with-search

Step 3: Use incremental indexing for subsequent runs

After the initial full index, subsequent runs should be incremental (the default):

forge index .

Only files modified since the last index are re-processed. Reserve --full for when you suspect the index is stale or corrupt.

Step 4: Address slow embedding generation

If --with-embeddings is slow, check your Ollama server:

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

If Ollama is not running, start it:

ollama serve

Embedding generation is optional. The AST index and keyword search work without embeddings. Only semantic (vector) search requires them. Consider indexing without embeddings first:

forge index . --with-search

Then add embeddings as a separate step:

forge index . --with-embeddings

Step 5: Pre-download the embedding model

If the first forge index --with-embeddings is slow due to model download, run this once to pre-download and verify the model:

forge warmup-model

Subsequent runs skip the download.

Step 6: Use `--with-git` only when needed

--with-git ingests the full commit history (up to 1000 commits by default). This adds time proportional to your commit history depth. Run it once after the initial index, not on every subsequent run:

# First setup
forge index . --with-search --with-git

# Daily incremental updates (no need to re-ingest git history)
forge index .

When to Escalate

Contact support at [email protected] if:

Indexing a codebase of fewer than 10,000 source files takes more than 5 minutes with no embedded generation.
forge status shows significantly fewer files than expected (the index may be silently skipping files).

Include the output of:

FORGE_LOG=debug forge index . 2>forge-debug.log
forge status --repo .

Attach forge-debug.log to your support request.