---
title: "Slow LMS API discovery | SCORM Lab"
canonical_url: "https://scorm-lab.com/lint/slow-api-discovery"
last_updated: "2026-09-23T11:50:26.771Z"
meta:
  description: "The course took seconds to find the LMS API, which usually means it was retrying after failures."
  "og:description": "The course took seconds to find the LMS API, which usually means it was retrying after failures."
  "og:title": "Slow LMS API discovery"
  "twitter:description": "Free in-browser SCORM debugger. Drop a SCORM 1.2 or 2004 .zip to inspect the API transcript, CMI data model, sequencing and lint. Nothing uploaded unless you choose to share."
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---

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# Slow LMS API discovery

The course took seconds to find the LMS API, which usually means it was retrying after failures.

## What you see

A pause on launch before anything happens, sometimes several seconds of blank frame. In the worst case the course gives up and runs untracked, which then presents as a course that never initialised.

## What the check looks for

More than two seconds between a SCO's first API activity and its Initialize call.

## Why it matters

A course finds the LMS by walking up the window hierarchy looking for an API object. When that fails it typically retries on a timer. The delay is the retry loop, so it is a symptom of a discovery problem rather than a problem in itself — and the same conditions that make it slow here can make it fail entirely elsewhere.

## How to fix it

Check how deeply the course is nested in frames and whether anything cross-origin sits between it and the LMS window, which blocks the search outright. Bound the search: a fixed number of levels and a fixed number of retries, then a visible failure. A course that fails loudly is far easier to diagnose than one that runs untracked.

## When this is fine

On a slow connection this can appear without anything being wrong. Treat it as worth a look, not as a defect.

[Open a package in SCORM Lab](https://scorm-lab.com/) to see whether this applies to yours. It runs in your browser, and nothing is uploaded unless you choose to share it.

Stuck on this one, or seeing it only in a particular LMS? That is usually a short conversation — [scormspecialist.co.uk](https://scormspecialist.co.uk/).