# Embed Assets Theme

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/embed-assets-theme/371868>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Created:** [June 26, 2025, 5:58pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/embed-assets-theme/371868 "2025-06-26T17:58:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![nlambert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecccb3/32.png) [@nlambert](https://meta.discourse.org/u/nlambert)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2025, 1:37am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/embed-assets-theme/371868/2 "2025-06-27T01:37:06Z")

</div>

I’ve found a partial answer to my own question and wanted to share the insight:

The `embed_[digest].css` file **is** built using the active theme’s selected color palette.

The issue, as I’ve come to realize, is due to **very aggressive HTTP response caching**.

What I’m still hoping someone can answer is:  
**Where are the HTTP responses for asset files cached in Discourse?**

This isn’t just browser-side caching — it appears to be server-side as well.

* * *

When tailing the Rails production log, I observe that only requests with a **new, unseen set of query parameters** trigger a fresh asset render:

```bash
$ tail -n 50 shared/standalone/log/rails/production.log -f
Started GET "/stylesheets/embed_afe162195ad0a7185309a19d8c36036d2e53708c.css?__ws=domain.tld&foo=bif" for fd00:aaaa::f1a at 2025-06-27 01:14:38 +0000
Processing by StylesheetsController#show as CSS
  Parameters: {"__ws"=>"domain.tld", "foo"=>"bif", "name"=>"embed_afe162195ad0a7185309a19d8c36036d2e53708c"}
Sent file /var/www/discourse/tmp/stylesheet-cache/embed_afe162195ad0a7185309a19d8c36036d2e53708c.css (0.2ms)
Completed 200 OK in 22ms

```

After that, any subsequent requests for the same URL (even with different query strings) return the **same** response — even if the underlying theme has changed.

For example:

1. `https://domain.tld/stylesheets/embed_[digest].css?__ws=domain.tld`
2. `https://domain.tld/stylesheets/embed_[digest].css?__ws=domain.tld&foo=bar`

I only see updated theme styles the **first** time a unique query is used. All future requests with the same parameters serve the previous version, even after recompilation.

The `launcher` script defaults to `RAILS_ENV=production`, and I’ve left that as-is. I could try switching to `RAILS_ENV=development` to disable caching entirely during development, but ideally, I’d like to know:

> **How can we clear or disable HTTP-level caching of asset responses in production?**

If anyone has insight into how Discourse caches these asset responses — or how to properly invalidate them — that would be really helpful.

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/embed-assets-theme/371868)._