Limits

Lific bounds anything a caller controls: request sizes, page sizes, how fast one address can try passwords, how much an archive may expand to. The numbers are built into the binary and cannot be changed in lific.toml. This page lists them so that a refusal is never a surprise.

Some limits refuse the request with an error that names the limit. Others quietly clamp the value you asked for, which is noted where it happens. A 429 or 503 from Lific carries a Retry-After header unless the table says otherwise.

Request size

The 2 MiB ceiling also decides the largest issue description or page you can save over REST, since the text travels in the request body.

Content

Pages of results

These never cause an error. A larger value is lowered to the cap, and a zero or negative limit becomes 1. When more results exist, the response says so and gives the offset for the next page.

A page of comments is also limited to about 2 MiB of response, counted after JSON encoding. A thread of long comments therefore returns fewer rows than you asked for, with a pointer to the next page. A short page does not mean the thread has ended.

Two MCP tools work on a fixed batch rather than pages. get_board shows at most 500 issues and says when older ones are left out. bulk_update changes at most 500 matching issues in one call.

Search

Attachments

Uploads are also checked against an allowlist of file types, read from the file's contents rather than its name. The MCP tool reference lists the types.

Sign-in and rate limits

Rate limits count requests per client address, and some also per account. Behind a reverse proxy, set trusted_proxies so Lific sees each visitor's address instead of the proxy's.

A request from a trusted proxy that carries an invalid X-Lific-Client-IP and X-Lific-Proxy-Secret pair gets 503 on these routes. See Configuration.

Concurrency

These limit how many expensive operations run at once on the whole instance. A request over the limit is refused immediately rather than queued.

A realtime connection is also closed if its client sends messages over 16 KiB, or more than 64 messages in 10 seconds. The web UI never does either.

Exports

These apply to Markdown exports from the web UI, REST, the MCP export tool and lific export. Each is checked before or while the export is built, and an export that would exceed one is refused with 400 rather than written partially.

When lific export project runs with --backend http, it unpacks the server's ZIP with its own limits: 10,000 entries and 512 MiB once expanded.

Exporting several issues at once from the web UI stops at 16 MiB and shows an error instead of saving a partial file.

Project archives

A project archive made or read by the CLI works with the local database, so it gets larger limits than one uploaded or downloaded through the browser. An archive over a limit is refused with 413 in the browser and an error naming the limit in the CLI.

A browser upload must finish within 120 seconds and may not stall for more than 20.

Restoring backups

lific restore checks an archive's expanded size before it writes anything, so an archive from someone else cannot fill the disk. An archive over a limit is refused. --allow-large raises the limits for an archive you made yourself; every other check still runs.

lific dump and the automatic backups have no size limit.

Imports and git hooks

Without a token, GitHub itself allows 60 requests an hour, which a large repository can use up.

OAuth

A registered client that has never been used is removed after 7 days, which frees room for new registrations.

Multiple instances

lific mcp --instances has its own limits on its configuration file, the number of instances, response sizes and timeouts. Multiple instances lists them.

The CLI's HTTP backend gives up on a request after 30 seconds.