What actually works? Gemini File Search

Gemini API
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Hi everyone,

I’m on a paid tier and I’m trying to use File Search (the vector store / FileSearchStore) across multiple Gemini models.

According to the docs, I’m using models that should support File Search, but they often don’t retrieve anything (the request goes through and the tool is invoked, but the model doesn’t receive any content from it, so it can’t answer the question).

What’s especially frustrating is the day-to-day instability:

  • Yesterday I could reliably get grounded answers using gemini-3-flash-preview with a specific FileSearchStore and an identical request setup.

  • Today, with exactly the same configuration, it no longer retrieves anything. Same story with gemini-3-pro-preview.

  • Additionally, models such as gemini-2.5-flash and gemini-2.5-flash-lite have never returned answers that actually used data from the FileSearchStore in my experience.

models.generateContent({
        contents: 'Some question',
        model: 'gemini-2.5-flash',
        config: {
          maxOutputTokens: 2000,
          tools: [
            {
              fileSearch: {
                fileSearchStoreNames: ['fileSearchStores/store-name']
              }
            }
          ]
        }
      });

On top of that, some config controls seem unreliable or ignored:

  • maxOutputTokens doesn’t behave as expected.
    Example: I set maxOutputTokens to ~2k, but the request ended up consuming ~68k tokens and returned basically nothing.

Questions:

  1. Is there any public status/monitor for breaking changes, rollouts, regressions, or known incidents affecting the API, models, token accounting, or other core features in general?

  2. Is there a stable model + API version you recommend for production use, so I don’t have to worry that what works today will stop working tomorrow?

  3. Or is there something obvious I might be doing wrong (e.g., store name format, tooling config shape, or retrieval metadata I should validate)?

I’m trying to build something real on top of this, but right now it feels like the answer is: “it depends on the day,”

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

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