ask-sources-db-failure-silently-degrades
IN premise
If the `sources_db` SQLite file is missing or corrupt, `_search_source_chunks` catches `OperationalError`/`DatabaseError` and returns empty string, degrading to belief-only mode without user-visible errors.
Summary
When the sources database file is missing or corrupted, the system silently falls back to using only beliefs for answering questions instead of also searching source chunks. This means users get no warning that part of the knowledge base is unavailable, which could lead to less informed answers without any indication that something is wrong.
Dependents
These beliefs depend on this one:
- ask-degrades-across-all-external-dependencies — The ask module degrades gracefully across all three external dependencies: LLM binary (catches TimeoutExpired/RuntimeError, falls back to raw search), FTS5 index (self-healing derived index with substring fallback), and source chunks database (catches OperationalError/DatabaseError and returns empty results) — no single external system failure prevents useful query responses.
Details
| Source | entries/2026/05/05/reasons_lib-ask.md |