What causes "Voyage API returned empty data" in tirth8205/code-review-graph?

Log and retry once — often transient

tirth8205/code-review-graph · error · RuntimeError

Voyage API returned empty data

Error message

Voyage API returned empty data

What it means

The Voyage API returned a 200-style response with no 'data' array (or an empty one). The provider refuses to return an empty embedding list because callers assume one vector per input text.

Source

Thrown at code_review_graph/embeddings.py:746

                                err_obj.get("message", err_msg)
                                if isinstance(err_obj, dict) else str(err_obj)
                            )
                    except Exception:  # nosec B110
                        pass
                    raise RuntimeError(
                        f"Voyage API HTTP {http_err.code}: {err_msg}"
                    ) from http_err

                response = _json.loads(raw)

                if "error" in response:
                    err = response["error"]
                    msg = err.get("message", "unknown") if isinstance(err, dict) else str(err)
                    raise RuntimeError(f"Voyage API error: {msg}")

                data = response.get("data", [])
                if not data:
                    raise RuntimeError("Voyage API returned empty data")

                any_has_index = any("index" in item for item in data)
                all_int_index = all(
                    isinstance(item.get("index"), int) for item in data
                )
                if all_int_index:
                    expected = set(range(len(texts)))
                    indices = [int(item["index"]) for item in data]
                    if len(set(indices)) != len(indices) or set(indices) != expected:
                        raise RuntimeError(
                            "Voyage API returned malformed indices "
                            f"(got {indices}, expected permutation of "
                            f"0..{len(texts) - 1}) — refusing to misalign vectors."
                        )
                    data = sorted(data, key=lambda item: int(item["index"]))
                elif not any_has_index:
                    if len(data) != len(texts):
                        raise RuntimeError(

View on GitHub (pinned to b58668751a)

Solutions

Log and retry once — often transient
Confirm the request actually included non-empty texts
If using a custom CRG_VOYAGE_BASE_URL, curl the endpoint manually and verify the 'data' array is present
Report to Voyage if reproducible with a minimal request

Defensive patterns

Strategy: retry

Validate before calling

if not texts:
    raise ValueError("refusing to call embed() with no texts")

Try / catch

try:
    vecs = provider.embed(texts)
except RuntimeError as e:
    if "empty data" in str(e):
        vecs = provider.embed(texts)  # one retry
    else:
        raise

Prevention

Never pass an empty texts list
Keep batches small enough to avoid truncation
Alert on repeated empty-data responses — likely a proxy issue

When it happens

Trigger: Calling embed()/embed_query() where the parsed Voyage response has no 'data' key or data == [] — server-side truncation, proxy stripping fields, or an empty input batch.

Common situations: Misconfigured CRG_VOYAGE_BASE_URL proxy that reformats responses, sending an empty texts list, or transient API anomalies/outage behavior.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of tirth8205/code-review-graph@b58668751a (2026-08-28). Data as JSON: /api/errors/1b4d93aa398d0716. Report an issue: GitHub.