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BUG: Frontend aborts long operations after 10s (global axios timeout) - reclustering, memory generation & search fail on large libraries #1345
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@rohan-pandeyy Can I work on this issue?
- moved this from Todo to In Progress in Issues tracker for PictoPy
on Jun 28, 2026 - added a commit that references this issue
on Jun 28, 2026 @VanshajPoonia can you confirm whether issue #1355 overlaps with your work within this issue?
@rohan-pandeyy Partial overlap, on one endpoint only:
POST /face-clusters/global-recluster- the one @aliviahossain flags in #1355 as "fully synchronous, blocks the request thread... needs task ID + polling treatment" - is exactly what PR #1349 (currently open) already implements: it returns atask_idimmediately and addsGET /face-clusters/global-recluster/{task_id}for polling status.The other five endpoints she lists (
add-folder,enable-ai-tagging,sync-folder,face-search,memories/generate) are untouched by #1349 and still need the work she describes -face-searchonly got a longer timeout, not an async conversion, andmemories/generatewas deliberately left alone since it's owned by a separate GSoC effort.So: no conflict if #1355 is scoped to those five, but worth pointing her at #1349 so she doesn't duplicate the global-recluster piece.
Reacted by Alivia HossainHey @rohan-pandeyy, following up on your question about the #1355 overlap:
that issue has since been closed as out of scope, so the overlap concern is
moot and this PR is unblocked.Current state: rebased cleanly on main (no conflicts), all CI green,
CodeRabbit approved, no unresolved threads. The underlying bug is still
live,axiosConfig.tson main still has the 10s cap on both clients.Could you take a look when you get a chance?
Is there an existing issue for this?
What happened?
The shared axios client applies a hard 10-second timeout to every backend request (
frontend/src/api/axiosConfig.ts:7→timeout: 10000; the sync client at:15too), with no per-request override anywhere infrontend/src(verified by grep).Several backend endpoints are synchronous and scale with library size, so on a realistic library they run past 10s. The client aborts with a timeout/network error and shows a failure to the user — even though the backend keeps running to completion — which can leave the UI and DB inconsistent.
Affected calls (all use the 10s
apiClient):triggerGlobalReclustering→POST /face-clusters/global-recluster(frontend/src/api/api-functions/face_clusters.ts:78). Backend runs full DBSCAN over all embeddings + regenerates a face image per cluster.generateMemories→POST /api/memories/generate(frontend/src/api/api-functions/memories.ts:73). Clusters every image with location data.getTimeline/getLocations,fetchSearchedFaces,fetchMultiPersonSearch— same client, can exceed 10s on large libraries.Steps to reproduce:
Expected: long operations either run without an artificial 10s cap, or run asynchronously with progress.
Proposed fix:
global-reclusterandmemories/generateto an async job + polling/SSE, reusing the existing model-download SSE pattern inbackend/app/routes/models.py.Not a duplicate: searched all issues (title + body) and all PRs for
timeout/axios; only matches are SQLitebusy_timeoutwork (PR #866/#982), unrelated to the HTTP client.Record