Guard TransformerModel preload to runserver processes only

Author: sahilds1

server/api/apps.py

@@ -6,5 +6,28 @@ class ApiConfig(AppConfig):
     name = 'api'
 
     def ready(self):
+        import os
+        import sys
+
+        # ready() runs in every Django process: migrate, test, shell, runserver, etc.
+        # Only preload the model when we're actually going to serve requests.
+        # Dev (docker-compose.yml) runs `manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000`.
+        # Prod (Dockerfile.prod CMD) runs `manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000 --noreload`.
+        # entrypoint.prod.sh also runs migrate, createsu, and populatedb before exec'ing
+        # runserver — the guard below correctly skips model loading for those commands too.
+        if sys.argv[1:2] != ['runserver']:
+            return
+
+        # Dev's autoreloader spawns two processes: a parent file-watcher and a child
+        # server. ready() runs in both, but only the child (RUN_MAIN=true) serves
+        # requests. Skip the parent to avoid loading the model twice on each file change.
+        # Prod uses --noreload so RUN_MAIN is never set; 'noreload' in sys.argv handles that case.
+        if os.environ.get('RUN_MAIN') != 'true' and '--noreload' not in sys.argv:
+            return
+
+        # Note: paraphrase-MiniLM-L6-v2 (~80MB) is downloaded from HuggingFace on first
+        # use and cached to ~/.cache/torch/sentence_transformers/ inside the container.
+        # That cache is ephemeral — every container rebuild re-downloads the model unless
+        # a volume is mounted at that path.
         from .services.sentencetTransformer_model import TransformerModel
         TransformerModel.get_instance()