--- title: "Slow LMS API discovery | SCORM Lab" canonical_url: "https://scorm-lab.com/lint/slow-api-discovery" last_updated: "2026-11-01T21:06:06.524Z" 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 or save." "twitter:title": "Debug any SCORM package in your browser, free" --- ` # 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 or save it. Stuck on this one, or seeing it only in a particular LMS? That is usually a short conversation — [get SCORM help](https://scormspecialist.co.uk/).