auto_indexing=false is ignored; enabling context_chat 5.4.0 unconditionally queues all mounts

[macewatson]

Which version of Nextcloud are you using?

34.0.2.1

Which version of PHP context_chat are you using?

5.4.0

Which version of backend context_chat are you using?

5.4.1

Nextcloud deployment method?

Bare-metal Apache/PHP with AppAPI and HaRP for ExApps.

Describe the bug

Setting context_chat app config auto_indexing to false before enabling the app does not prevent the initial crawl. After enabling context_chat 5.4.0, the app scheduled crawl jobs for every mount and inserted 8,527 file references into oc_context_chat_queue.

The setting was verified as false both before and after enabling the app.

Source review of the installed 5.4.0 release shows:

• lib/Repair/AppInstallStep.php adds SchedulerJob during first install.
• lib/BackgroundJobs/SchedulerJob.php enumerates all mounts and schedules StorageCrawlJob without checking auto_indexing.
• lib/BackgroundJobs/StorageCrawlJob.php inserts file references into the queue without checking auto_indexing.
• appinfo/info.xml exposes prompt, search, and stats, but no documented manual context_chat:scan command.

Expected behavior

When auto_indexing=false, enabling the app should not schedule an initial crawl or enqueue files automatically. An administrator should be able to complete provider configuration and explicitly start a controlled indexing operation later.

Actual behavior

Enabling the app scheduled all detected mounts regardless of the stored setting. In this case:

• oc_context_chat_queue: 8,527 rows
• oc_context_chat_content_queue: 0 rows
• oc_context_chat_action_queue: 0 rows
• oc_context_chat_fs_events: 0 rows

The deployment was stopped and cleaned up after detection.

Data-transmission note

No document content was transmitted externally in this reproduction. The content queue remained empty and the vector database remained empty. This was verified before cleanup.

Steps to reproduce

1. Install context_chat_backend 5.4.1.
2. Install context_chat 5.4.0 but keep it disabled.
3. Set the app config value auto_indexing to false.
4. Verify the stored value is false.
5. Enable context_chat.
6. Run the normal Nextcloud background-job cycle.
7. Observe SchedulerJob/StorageCrawlJob activity and rows appearing in oc_context_chat_queue for all mounts.

Additional context

The backend's embedding provider configuration was incomplete in this deployment, but that is separate from this issue. It prevented content processing; it did not cause the unscoped crawl. The crawl is reproducible from the PHP app's scheduling path before successful embedding processing is available.

No hostnames, IP addresses, credentials, customer data, or private logs are included in this report.

[kyteinsky]

hello,
thanks for the report.
not quite sure how we should handle this. We can surely add checks for "auto_indexing" config in the paths you mentioned but in earlier versions there was also a command "occ context_chat:scan" which allowed manual indexing of files. It does not exist now so disabling auto_indexing disables all indexing.
it might be better to drop the auto_indexing option altogether.