Realtime sessions previously lazy-loaded each pipeline sub-model (VAD,
transcription, LLM, TTS) on first use, so every cold session paid a
per-request model-load stall and load errors only surfaced mid-stream.
Warm the whole pipeline eagerly and blockingly at session start
(including the voice-gate speaker-recognition model, which an enforced
gate blocks each utterance on; compaction's summary_model stays lazy
since it only runs off the response path):
- Add backend.PreloadModel / PreloadModelByName as the single load path
for every modality (no transcription special-case; backend-omitted
configs are deprecated).
- The realtime session blocks on Model.Warmup and returns a
model_load_error to the client if any stage fails to load;
updateSession warms in the background. Opt out per pipeline with
pipeline.disable_warmup, exposed as a UI toggle via the
config-metadata registry.
Add a LocalAI-native POST /backend/load (and /v1/backend/load) that
pre-loads a model -- expanding realtime pipelines into their sub-models
-- as the inverse of /backend/shutdown. There is one preload engine
(backend.PreloadStages): the realtime Warmup methods, /backend/load and
the --load-to-memory startup flag all use it, so --load-to-memory now
also expands pipeline models and records load-failure traces. Pipeline
sub-model alias resolution is likewise shared
(ModelConfigLoader.LoadResolvedModelConfig). Surface the endpoint
everywhere an admin manages models:
- MCP admin tool load_model (httpapi + inproc clients, safety/catalog
prompts, catalog/dispatch tests).
- "Load into memory" action in the React models UI.
- Swagger regenerated; docs moved to the general backend-monitor page
since it is not realtime-specific.
Fix a Traces UI crash ("json: unsupported value: -Inf"): audio-snippet
RMS/peak now floor at a finite dBFS, and backend-trace data is sanitized
to drop non-finite floats before marshaling. The sanitizer is
copy-on-write -- it runs on every RecordBackendTrace, so containers are
only re-allocated on the paths that actually changed.
Migrate core/http/openresponses_test.go onto the prebuilt mock-backend
the rest of the http suite already uses -- it was the last spec still
pointing at a real HuggingFace model, so it 404'd wherever no vision
backend was built -- and fix its item_reference specs to send the
spec's "id" field instead of "item_id", which the handler never
accepted.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8 Claude Code
Signed-off-by: Richard Palethorpe <io@richiejp.com>
* docs: add 'how LocalAI works' architecture diagram
Add a blueprint-style architecture diagram: clients -> small core (API,
router, WebUI, agents) -> gRPC -> backend processes pulled on demand as
OCI images. Place it on the overview page and replace the stale external
architecture image on the reference page.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* docs: add blueprint diagrams across feature, distributed & getting-started docs
Add 24 architecture/flow/comparison diagrams (PNG + HTML source) under
docs/static/images/diagrams/, wired into their docs pages, from an
impact-vs-effort audit of the docs. Broaden the API surface on the
overview architecture diagram (OpenAI, Anthropic, ElevenLabs, Ollama,
and LocalAI's own API) and move the gRPC boundary label clear of the arrows.
Pages: distributed mode (architecture, scheduling, ds4 layer-split),
distributed inferencing, MLX, realtime, quantization, MCP, agents,
mitm & cloud proxy, middleware, reverse-proxy TLS, VRAM, voice & face
recognition, reranker, function calling, fine-tuning (recipe + jobs),
diarization, audio transform, quickstart, model resolution.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* docs: add composable-core diagram to README hero
Commit the composable-core card (small core + on-demand backend tiles)
alongside the other diagrams and reference it from the README hero via a
repo-relative path, so it renders on GitHub.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* docs: fix composable-core connectors/badge and federated-vs-worker layout
- composable-core: thicken the plug-in connectors so they read clearly, and
widen the SEPARATE IMAGE badge so its text no longer overflows the box.
- federated-vs-worker: shorten the WHOLE/SPLIT REQUEST pills to fit, and
replace the tangled node-to-node activation arrows with a clean fan-out
(request split across all sharded nodes), mirroring the federated panel.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
---------
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
Co-authored-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* feat(concurrency-groups): per-model exclusive groups for backend loading
Adds `concurrency_groups: [...]` to model YAML configs. Two models that share
a group cannot be loaded concurrently on the same node — loading one evicts
the others, reusing the existing pinned/busy/retry policy from LRU eviction.
Layered design:
- Watchdog (pkg/model): per-node correctness floor — on every Load(), evict
any loaded model that shares a group with the requested one. Pinned skips
surface NeedMore so the loader retries (and ultimately logs a clear
warning), instead of silently allowing the rule to be violated.
- Distributed scheduler (core/services/nodes): soft anti-affinity hint —
scheduleNewModel prefers nodes that don't already host a same-group
model, falling back to eviction only if every candidate has a conflict.
Composes with NodeSelector at the same point in the candidate pipeline.
Per-node, not cluster-wide: VRAM is a node-local resource, and two heavy
models running on different nodes is fine. The ConfigLoader is wired into
SmartRouter via a small ConcurrencyConflictResolver interface so the nodes
package keeps a narrow surface on core/config.
Refactors the inner LRU eviction body into a shared collectEvictionsLocked
helper and the loader retry loop into retryEnforce(fn, maxRetries, interval),
so both LRU and group enforcement share busy/pinned/retry semantics.
Closes#9659.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-7 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* fix(watchdog): sync pinned + concurrency_groups at startup
The startup-time watchdog setup lives in initializeWatchdog (startup.go),
not in startWatchdog (watchdog.go). The latter is only invoked from the
runtime-settings RestartWatchdog path. As a result, neither
SyncPinnedModelsToWatchdog nor SyncModelGroupsToWatchdog ran at boot,
so `pinned: true` and `concurrency_groups: [...]` only became effective
after a settings-driven watchdog restart.
Fix by adding both sync calls to initializeWatchdog. Confirmed end-to-end:
loading model A in group "heavy", then C with no group (coexists),
then B in group "heavy" now correctly evicts A and leaves [B, C].
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-7 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* fix(test): satisfy errcheck on new os.Remove in concurrency_groups spec
CI lint runs new-from-merge-base, so the existing pre-existing
`defer os.Remove(tmp.Name())` lines are baseline-grandfathered but the
one introduced by the concurrency_groups YAML round-trip test is held
to errcheck. Wrap the remove in a closure that discards the error.
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-7 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
---------
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* feat: allow to set forcing backends eviction while requests are in flight
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* feat: try to make the request sit and retry if eviction couldn't be done
Otherwise calls that in order to pass would need to shutdown other
backends would just fail.
In this way instead we make the request sit and retry eviction until it
succeeds. The thresholds can be configured by the user.
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* add tests
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* expose settings to CLI
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* Update docs
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
---------
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* feat(loader): refactor single active backend support to LRU
This changeset introduces LRU management of loaded backends. Users can
set now a maximum number of models to be loaded concurrently, and, when
setting LocalAI in single active backend mode we set LRU to 1 for
backward compatibility.
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* chore: add tests
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* Update docs
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* Fixups
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
---------
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* feat(ui): add watchdog settings
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* Do not re-read env
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* Some refactor, move other settings to runtime (p2p)
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* Add API Keys handling
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* Allow to disable runtime settings
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* Documentation
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* Small fixups
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* show MCP toggle in index
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
* Drop context default
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
---------
Signed-off-by: Ettore Di Giacinto <mudler@localai.io>
