Non-streaming generate_completion was the only LLM entry point that
didn't default num_ctx — stream_chat and stream_chat_with_tools both
fall back to Config.OLLAMA_NUM_CTX (16384). When a caller omitted the
argument, Ollama silently used the model's default window (~4k on
qwen3) and truncated the prompt.
That footgun was masked by fallback paths in the research pipeline:
_generate_outline's prompt carries ~12 sources × 2000 chars (~6k
tokens) of source material plus a system prompt, so the prompt got
chopped, the model never saw the sources, JSON parsing failed twice,
and run_research_pipeline dropped into the single-note "monolith"
fallback (research.py:251). The user reported chat 215 producing such
a monolith note for a multi-source research topic.
Two-layer fix:
- Default num_ctx to Config.OLLAMA_NUM_CTX inside generate_completion,
matching the streaming entry points. Any current or future caller
that forgets the argument stops silently losing input.
- Pin num_ctx=16384 explicitly in _generate_outline and
_generate_executive_summary with comments pointing at the failure
mode, so a refactor of the generate_completion default can't
silently regress the research pipeline.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
bvandeusenandClaude Opus 4.6
70cea78c2f