Global AI catalog partitions are absent from the search/query index — Providers/Models/Agents/Skills catalogs render empty although the nodes exist #354

Summary

On affected deployed instances, the global AI catalog partitions (Provider, Model, Agent, Skill, Harness) are materialized but missing from the search/query index. Every index-based access (search, children-listing, the catalog layout areas) returns empty, while authoritative exact-path reads succeed. The AI-menu catalog areas are index-driven, so they render empty.

How to reproduce

Precondition: a deployed instance that has at least one global catalog node (e.g. a Provider/<name> node exists — confirm with step 1).

1. Exact-path read (authoritative): get @Provider/Anthropic → returns the ModelProvider node. ✅ node exists.
2. Children listing (index-based): get @Provider/* → [] ❌ (should list Provider/Anthropic).
3. Search (index-based):
   • search nodeType:ModelProvider → 0 ❌
   • search namespace:Provider scope:descendants nodeType:ModelProvider → 0 ❌
4. UI: open the top-bar AI menu → Providers (and Models / Agents / Skills) → the catalog renders empty.

Expected: steps 2–4 return / show the existing node(s).
Actual: steps 2–4 return empty, while step 1 proves the node exists.

Same pattern for the other roots: get @Agent/*, @Skill/*, @Harness/* → []; search nodeType:Agent/Skill return only space-partition nodes, never the global catalog.

Impact

• All four AI-menu catalogs (Providers / Models / Agents / Skills) render empty.
• The BYO-API-key UI (AI menu → Providers → create/edit a personal provider) is unusable.
• The harness picker (namespace:Harness nodeType:Harness) is empty ⇒ /harness can't switch to a CLI harness ⇒ the /login Connect flow can't be reached there (see Document how to enable per-user Claude Code Connect (Features__Ai__Clis__ClaudeCode) and its prerequisites #324).
• The "empty picker ⇒ no nodes exist" diagnostic in ModelProviderSetup.md (line 231) is misleading — the nodes exist, they're just unindexed.

Why it's an index-registration gap, not a catalog-UI bug

The catalog renders whatever search returns; the search index simply doesn't include these partitions on the affected instance. Evidence it's index-scoped: on a separate instance the searchable_schemas registry (the schemas the search unions over) contains provider/agent/skill/model/harness; on the affected instance, index queries return empty for exactly those partitions while exact-path get works. So the fix belongs in the searchable-schemas sync/registration, not the catalog rendering.

Likely cause / fix

SyncSearchableSchemasAsync is meant to register the catalog partitions as searchable on each run ("a real catalog wrongly missing is re-added on the next sync"). On affected instances these partitions are absent from the search read-model. Ensure the reconcile registers + indexes the global catalog partitions and self-heals instances already in this state; add a repair path.

References

• src/MeshWeaver.AI/AiCatalogLayoutAreas.cs (index-driven catalogs)
• SyncSearchableSchemasAsync / searchable_schemas
• ThreadComposer harness pick (namespace:Harness nodeType:Harness)

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