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Inconsistent results from colabfold_search public API: random query-only A3M files #845

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@LouisaMe09

Hi,

I’m using OpenDDE with the default MSA generation, which internally uses colabfold_search and the public ColabFold/MMseqs2 API.

I’m seeing a recurring issue where a substantial fraction of the generated A3M files contain only the query sequence and no additional homologs. No error is reported by colabfold_search or OpenDDE—the job completes successfully, but the resulting MSA consists solely of the input sequence.

The strange part is that this appears to be random. If I rerun the exact same sequence, it often returns a normal MSA with many homologs. In other words, the behavior is not reproducible for a given sequence:
• Run 1 → query-only A3M
• Run 2 (same sequence) → normal MSA with many hits

Because the same sequence can produce completely different results across runs, I suspect this is not caused by the sequence itself but rather by the public API. I find the following error under this link:
https://search.mmseqs.com/

Is this the reason for my error? Do you know approx when it will be fixed?

Thanks!

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