Issues starting Graph Server

[Darius-Lim-zh]

Bug Description

Within apps/graph, when starting the graph server with a virtual environment, the error saying that circuit tracer and uvicorn not being installed will appear

How To Reproduce Bug

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to 'apps/graph'
2. Set up a virtual environment for the graph server
3. Run installation steps
4. Start server, 'poetry run python start.py --model_id Qwen/Qwen3-4B --transcoder_set mwhanna/qwen3-4b-transcoders'
5. See error saying that circuit tracer or uvicorn is not installed

Expected Behavior

The server should have started on port 5004

Screenshots

System Config / Version

• OS: Ubuntu 22.04

Additional Context

I managed to workaround this by simply using the base python and installing circuit-tracer and uvicorn myself, though I suspect that this might be due to compatibility of poetry with venv when trying to execute python again

[hijohnnylin]

@shayansadeghieh do you have time to take a look?

[shayansadeghieh]

Hey @Darius-Lim-zh ,

Hmm I can't seem to reproduce the issue on my side (im on a mac btw).

• I fully deleted my virtual environment (rm -rf .venv from within apps/graph)
• Cleared my poetry cache (poetry cache clear . --all)
• From the root of the repo ran make graph-localhost-install (there is actually a trailing space on this command which I'll fix in a separate PR FYI @hijohnnylin ).
• Then ran poetry run python start.py --model_id Qwen/Qwen3-4B --transcoder_set mwhanna/qwen3-4b-transcoders

➜  graph git:(debug-issue-167) ✗ poetry run python start.py --model_id Qwen/Qwen3-4B --transcoder_set mwhanna/qwen3-4b-transcoders

Model: Qwen/Qwen3-4B
Transcoder set: mwhanna/qwen3-4b-transcoders
Fetching 36 files:   0%|                                                                                                                                                                                                      | 0/36 [00:00<?, ?it/s^Cayer_0.safetensors:  

16%|█████████████████████████████                                                                                                                                                          | 283M/1.78G [00:05<01:02, 24.0MB/s^Cayer_0.safetensors:  16%|██████████████████████████████▏                                                                                                                                                        

Do you recall your exact steps for creating your virtual environment?

[Darius-Lim-zh]

I was using ML Azure, which provided me with a default anaconda virtual environment for me to use, so unfortunately, I do not have any steps for creating my virtual environment, the steps I have used to get around this issue is to simply deactivate the conda environment

Below is what I would run to currently get my graph server to run

cd Neuronpedia/neuronpedia/apps/graph
conda deactivate
poetry run python start.py --model_id Qwen/Qwen3-4B --transcoder_set mwhanna/qwen3-4b-transcoders

When ran with the conda environment, even after poetry install, I would still get errors like 'circuit-tracer' or 'uvicorn' not being found. If you aren't getting similar errors, I might be encountering issues due to my specific environment.

[shayansadeghieh]

hmm, did you run poetry install from apps/graph after the conda deactivate step? From what you sent you seem to be missing that step.

But in general yeah, it is a bit difficult juggling conda + poetry.

[Darius-Lim-zh]

Yes, I ran poetry install in apps/graph after conda deactivate