This commit addresses critical performance issues with vector visualization
search (reducing time from 40s to ~2s) and improves result visualization
through better visual encoding.
## Performance Fixes
### 1. Fix blocking sleep in retry decorator (base.py:51)
- Changed `time.sleep(5)` to `await anyio.sleep(5)` in @retry_on_429
- Prevents entire event loop from freezing during rate limit retries
- Impact: Reduced search time from 22s to 16s initially
### 2. Add concurrency limiting for verification (verification.py:77-93)
- Added `anyio.Semaphore(20)` to limit concurrent HTTP requests
- Prevents connection pool exhaustion (RequestError) from 90+ simultaneous requests
- Fixes false filtering (was filtering 77/90 results incorrectly)
- Note: Semaphore still in code but verification removed from viz endpoint
### 3. Remove unnecessary verification from viz endpoint (viz_routes.py:483-486)
- Visualization only needs Qdrant metadata (title, excerpt), not full content
- Verification only required for sampling (LLM needs full note content)
- Impact: Reduced search time from 43.7s to ~2s (final fix)
### 4. Restore streaming scanner pattern (scanner.py)
- Process notes one-at-a-time using async generator
- Avoids loading all notes into memory
## Visualization Improvements
### 5. Result-relative score normalization (viz_routes.py:489-504)
- Normalize scores within result set: best=1.0, worst=0.0
- Removes arbitrary RRF normalization (theoretical max didn't make sense)
- Makes visual encoding meaningful regardless of algorithm scores
### 6. Power scaling for marker sizes (userinfo_routes.py:743)
- Changed from linear `8 + (score * 12)` to power `6 + (score² * 14)`
- Creates dramatic visual contrast: 0.0→6px, 0.5→9.5px, 1.0→20px
- Combined with opacity (0.2-1.0) for clear visual hierarchy
### 7. Multi-channel visual encoding (userinfo_routes.py:740-745)
- Size: Exponentially scaled with score²
- Opacity: Linear 0.2-1.0 (keeps all points visible)
- Color: Viridis gradient (blue→yellow)
- Effect: Top results are large/bright/opaque, context results small/dim/transparent
## Result
- Search time: 40s → ~2s (20x faster)
- Visual contrast: Subtle → dramatic (clear result hierarchy)
- No arbitrary cutoffs: All results visible, best naturally highlighted
🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)
Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
Chris Coutinho
137d1d6c75