meilisearch warmup

MeiliSearch Index Warm-Up

nSelf can issue representative search queries immediately after nself start brings MeiliSearch online, populating the query-result cache before real user traffic arrives.

Warm-up is opt-in and non-blocking. It runs in a background goroutine and never delays the startup sequence. Errors are collected and surfaced only in verbose mode.

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Configuration

Set MEILISEARCH_WARMUP_QUERIES in your .env.local or .env.secrets to a comma-separated list of query strings:

MEILISEARCH_WARMUP_QUERIES="users,posts,settings"

Leave the variable unset (or empty) to skip warm-up entirely. That is the default.

Environment variable reference

Variable	Default	Description
MEILISEARCH_WARMUP_QUERIES	(empty — warm-up disabled)	Comma-separated list of query strings issued to MeiliSearch on startup

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How it works

1. After health checks pass, nSelf reads MEILISEARCH_WARMUP_QUERIES.
2. When the variable is non-empty and the configured search engine is meilisearch, a background goroutine fires the warm-up.
3. Each query is sent to the MeiliSearch multi-search endpoint (POST /multi-search) with limit: 1.
4. A 404 response (index not yet created on a fresh instance) is treated as success because the goal is request-path warm-up, not data validation.
5. The goroutine times out after 10 seconds regardless of progress.

Running nself start --verbose prints a one-line summary:

  MeiliSearch warm-up: 3/3 queries succeeded

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Choosing warm-up queries

Pick queries that reflect your application's most common search patterns. Two to five queries is usually sufficient:

• Core entity names your users search for most often (for example users, posts)
• Short, common prefixes that stress-test the prefix-matching path
• A wildcard or empty string if your app uses auto-complete with no initial input

Avoid queries that return millions of results — limit: 1 is used, but the query parser still evaluates the full index.

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Disabling warm-up

Remove or unset MEILISEARCH_WARMUP_QUERIES:

unset MEILISEARCH_WARMUP_QUERIES
# or remove the line from .env.local

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Related

• Operations-Overview
• cmd-start
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