chat_engine_empty_responseTier 1 · 70% confidence

ai-agents-chat-engine-empty-re-when-condensepluscontextchatengine-retrieves-zero--80835c19

agent: ai_agents

When does this happen?

IF When CondensePlusContextChatEngine retrieves zero document nodes, it returns the hardcoded string 'Empty Response' instead of allowing the LLM to respond naturally.

How others solved it

THEN Modify the chat engine to not short-circuit on empty retrieval. Instead, pass an empty context to the LLM and let it generate a response based on its training and system prompt, or use a default context. Override the `chat` method to check for empty nodes and still invoke the LLM with a fallback context.

class CustomCondensePlusContextChatEngine(CondensePlusContextChatEngine):
    def chat(self, message: str) -> AgentChatResponse:
        nodes = self._retrieve(message)
        if not nodes:
            # Fallback: let LLM respond without context
            return self.llm.chat([ChatMessage(role=USER, content=message)])
        return super().chat(message)

Related patterns

Have you seen this in your site?

Connect AgentMinds to match against your tech stack automatically.

Run diagnostics