Embeddings silently disabled for upgrading users (HIVEMIND_EMBEDDINGS unset → enabled=false)

[kaghni]

Symptom

Users upgrading past bfc8e07 (and fresh installs that don't set HIVEMIND_EMBEDDINGS=true) get embeddings persistently disabled on first SDK call. ~/.deeplake/config.json ends up with {embeddings: {enabled: false}} forever — until the user explicitly runs hivemind embeddings install (which writes enabled: true).

Root cause

src/user-config.ts:67 documents the migration rule as:

HIVEMIND_EMBEDDINGS=false OR unset → enabled: false
HIVEMIND_EMBEDDINGS=true (or any other truthy) → enabled: true

And migrationValueFromEnv() at line 96 implements that literally:

if (raw === undefined) return false;

So on first call to getEmbeddingsEnabled() (no config yet, env var unset), it returns false and persists that to disk. The decision becomes sticky.

Impact

• Users who had working embeddings before upgrading silently lose semantic memory search
• No banner fires because the embeddings-broken signal is the one we removed in embeddings: drop user-visible 'deps missing' banner, keep recycle #182
• Discovery requires the user to notice grep/recall feels degraded and find the CLI command

Suggested fix

Per CodeRabbit on #182:

 function migrationValueFromEnv() {
   const raw = process.env.HIVEMIND_EMBEDDINGS;
-  if (raw === undefined) return false;
+  if (raw === undefined) return undefined;
   if (raw === "false") return false;
   return true;
 }

And update getEmbeddingsEnabled() to treat undefined from migration as "default true" (no opt-out signal present).

Why not in PR #182

#182's scope is the user-visible banner removal. Changing the migration default touches Emanuele's intentional design rule (bfc8e07) — needs his judgment call on opt-in vs opt-out.

Related

• PR embeddings: drop user-visible 'deps missing' banner, keep recycle #182 (banner removal) — surfaces this regression because there's now no audible "embeddings off" signal
• bfc8e07 (feat(embeddings): hello handshake + stuck-daemon recycle + visible signal) — where the rule was introduced
• @emanuele-fenocchi-activeloop's call on the design