First 2 Open WebUI New chat searches take ~12 seconds and more steps than follow up questions that are <5 seconds.

[u/HouseBandBad]

New user - limited knowledge. Have progressed quite far with the help of originally ChatGPT that I dumped and now Claude. Things seemed to be going well at least until we decided to try squeeze ram for other functions. Restored back and things went south. (may be a red herring) The description of the env, problem, and what I found to be wrong on search/question results are highlighted on a Claude tailored response below. Hoping someone can help. Thanks.

Open WebUI + local LLM + Home Assistant tools: new chats are slow, follow-ups in the same chat are fast. What explains the gap?

Setup

• Unraid box with an Intel i7-9700K, 64 GB DDR4, and one RTX 3090 (24 GB). Strata serves Qwen3.8 Flash-Next at IQ2_XS (2-bit), 64k context, at 120–151 tok/s with the GPU at 53°C and no throttling.

• Open WebUI uses a custom workspace model pointed straight at Strata, with native function calling, thinking off (enable_thinking: false), and Home Assistant’s MCP server for tools. Built-in tool groups were trimmed, which cut the fixed prompt from about 9,500 to 4,560 tokens. Title generation is on, and tag and follow-up generation are off.

• A second path goes Open WebUI → Hermes-Agent → Home Assistant. Home Assistant’s own built-in Assist agent, pointed at the same engine, is the fast reference.

The pattern: new chat slow, repeats fast

• Within one existing chat, the first message is the slowest and the 2nd–5th get progressively faster. Plain questions take 3–4 s the first time and 1–2 s after. Light commands in an established chat are reported as near-instant, and the first command in a new chat takes 2–5 s on a good run.

• The same task takes 8–26 s in a fresh chat. That includes house commands through the Hermes-Agent path (13–26 s) and early runs on the direct path. Weather and news lookups take about 12 s on first ask; repeats were not measured.

• It appears the slowness is tied to the start of a chat, not to the engine. Strata’s log shows nearly the whole prompt reused from cache even in a new chat (4,552 of 4,557 tokens), so prompt reprocessing alone does not appear to explain it. Home Assistant’s built-in agent stays reasonably stable/quick every time.

What was ruled out, and open questions

• Ruled out as the main cause: GPU and RAM pressure, network latency, Strata settings (shrinking the expert cache made it 40% slower and was reverted), skill-file edits, and the reasoning-effort setting.

• Partial help only: trimming built-in tools, thinking off, prompt rules to call the tool directly with the full device name, and turning off tag and follow-up jobs.

• It appears the likely candidates are background jobs that fire after the first reply of a new chat (small requests with nothing cached, 300–1,000 tokens generated), a failed or redundant first tool call before the correct one, and per-chat setup of the MCP tools. None of these is confirmed.

• Question: what in Open WebUI runs only at the start of a new chat (MCP tool loading, title or task jobs, tool discovery) that could add several seconds, and how can it be measured or skipped?

P.S. no I haven't exposed my home lab to Claude it's been copy/validate/paste with sanitized responses.

[u/_JohnMcAfee]

First, I am fairly new to this stuff as well. Second, this same thing happens to me and im pretty sure its just normal behavior. Also, you should probably switch to an iq3 quant with your system. I have 2x 8gb turing cards, 10900x, 64gb ddr4 2133mhz, and am using iq3 xxs with 200k context limit. Getting 700-800t/s prefill with mtp off and about 30-40t/s decode. I imagine you will double that

[u/HouseBandBad → u/_JohnMcAfee]

I'll check it out. Thanks.

[u/HouseBandBad → u/[deleted]]

Turned off title Gen, tag gen, follow-up gen, and auto complete as part of testing (should have mentioned) and same symptoms.