continuedev/continue · warning · Error

No workspace directories found

Error message

No workspace directories found

What it means

retrieveContextItemsFromEmbeddings asks the IDE for workspace directories and throws if the list is empty: with no open folder there is nothing to index or retrieve from, so @codebase / embeddings-based retrieval cannot run.

Source

Thrown at core/context/retrieval/retrieval.ts:31

  options: any | undefined,
  filterDirectory: string | undefined,
): Promise<ContextItem[]> {
  // Currently you can use codebase without an embeddings provider and it will just skip the embeddings inputs
  // if (!extras.embeddingsProvider) {
  //   void extras.ide.showToast(
  //     "warning",
  //     "Set up an embeddings model to use this feature. Visit the docs to learn more: " +
  //       "https://docs.continue.dev/customize/model-roles/embeddings",
  //   );
  //   return [];
  // }
  const includeEmbeddings = !!extras.config.selectedModelByRole.embed;

  // Get tags to retrieve for
  const workspaceDirs = await extras.ide.getWorkspaceDirs();

  if (workspaceDirs.length === 0) {
    throw new Error("No workspace directories found");
  }

  // Fill half of the context length, up to a max of 100 snippets
  const contextLength = extras.llm.contextLength;
  const tokensPerSnippet = 512;
  const nFinal =
    options?.nFinal ??
    Math.min(DEFAULT_N_FINAL, contextLength / tokensPerSnippet / 2);
  const useReranking = options?.useReranking ?? !!extras.reranker;
  const nRetrieve = useReranking ? options?.nRetrieve || 2 * nFinal : nFinal;

  const branches = (await Promise.race([
    Promise.all(workspaceDirs.map((dir) => extras.ide.getBranch(dir))),
    new Promise((resolve) => {
      setTimeout(() => {
        resolve(["NONE"]);
      }, 500);
    }),

View on GitHub (pinned to 5522c6f44c)

Solutions

1. Open a local folder as the workspace and retry @codebase
2. Ensure the folder is a real directory the extension can enumerate (not an empty ad-hoc workspace)
3. Reload the window after opening the folder so the backend re-queries workspace dirs

const dirs = await ide.getWorkspaceDirs();
if (dirs.length === 0) { informUser('Open a folder to use @codebase'); return []; }

When it happens

Trigger: Invoking @codebase or any embeddings retrieval when ide.getWorkspaceDirs() returns []: no folder open, blank window, or workspace with no local roots.

Common situations: Running Continue in a single-file/untitled window; remote workspaces where directory listing fails; extension started before a folder was opened.

Related errors

• Failed to determine the workspace directory.
• Failed to fetch messages: ${response.statusText}
• No reranker set up
• await resp.text()
• await resp.text()

AI-assisted analysis of continuedev/continue@5522c6f44c (2026-08-27). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b3bd88262fa4b481. Report an issue: GitHub.