Troubleshooting

Keychain prompts on first launch

When you first open Golden Retriever after installation, macOS will show three keychain access prompts (one for each secure storage item). Click “Always Allow” on each. This is a one-time setup — you won’t see these again.

If you accidentally clicked “Deny”, go to Keychain Access.app, find the Golden Retriever entries, and delete them. Then relaunch the app.

”Rate limit exceeded” error

This means you’ve hit Google’s API rate limit. The free Gemini API tier has usage caps:

Embedding: 1,500 requests per minute
Search/Ask AI: 15 requests per minute

What to do: Wait a minute and try again. During large folder indexing, the app automatically throttles to stay within limits.

Qdrant won’t start

Golden Retriever bundles Qdrant (the vector search engine) inside the app. If it fails to start:

Check Settings → Diagnostics for error details
Make sure no other Qdrant instance is running on port 6334
Try quitting and relaunching the app

Files not appearing after indexing

If you added a folder but files don’t show up in search:

Check the Content Library tab — look for files with error icons
Make sure the files are in a supported format
Check that the folder has read permissions (right-click → Get Info in Finder)
Try running the pipeline again from the Content Library

Search returns no results

Make sure indexing has completed (check Content Library for progress)
Try broader search terms — semantic search finds meaning, not exact keywords
Check that Qdrant is running (Settings → Diagnostics)