Problem

The workspace knowledgebase only re-indexes on explicit hermes workspace index or via the debounce-on-retrieve path (30s cooldown). Files modified between retrieval calls may serve stale results.

Research

• Continue.dev: Uses VS Code FileSystemWatcher with 5-second debounce and AbortController for cancellation
• PrivateGPT: IngestWatcher polls filesystem every 5 seconds via simple loop
• Khoj: No file watching — entirely API-triggered re-indexing

Proposed approach

Add an optional lightweight polling watcher:

1. New config key: knowledgebase.watch_for_changes: false (off by default)
2. When enabled, spawn a background thread that polls workspace roots every N seconds (configurable, default 10)
3. On change detection (mtime comparison), trigger index_workspace_knowledgebase() in background
4. Use existing _AUTO_INDEX_DEBOUNCE_SECONDS to avoid redundant re-indexes
5. New module: agent/workspace_watcher.py

Related

Part of workspace foundation (#5840)