Files
LocalAI/formal-verification
Richard Palethorpe 5d0c43ec6e feat(realtime): Semantic VAD EOU token (#10444)
* feat(realtime): EOU-driven semantic_vad turn detection

Add a `semantic_vad` turn-detection mode to the realtime API that feeds
the transcription model live and decides "the user finished speaking"
from the `<EOU>` end-of-utterance token rather than from silence alone.
When EOU fires the turn commits immediately (~0.3s); otherwise it falls
back to an eagerness-scaled silence threshold (low/med/high = 8/4/2s).

Plumbing, bottom to top:

- proto: `AudioTranscriptionLive` bidirectional RPC (config-first oneof,
  mono float PCM @16k, ready-ack / Unimplemented degrade signal) plus
  `TranscriptResult.eou` for the unary retranscribe gate.
- pkg/grpc: client/server/base/embed scaffolding for the bidi stream,
  modeled on AudioTransformStream; release stream conns on terminal Recv.
- parakeet-cpp: live transcription RPC with per-C-call engine locking
  (one live stream per turn, finalize+free at commit); bump parakeet.cpp
  to ABI v5 — incremental StreamingMel (no more quadratic per-feed mel
  recompute that delayed EOU on long turns) and the <EOU>/<EOB> split;
  strip the literal <EOU>/<EOB> from offline text and set Eou.
- core/backend: LiveTranscriptionSession wrapper + pipeline
  `turn_detection:` config block (type/eagerness/retranscribe).
- realtime: semantic_vad integration — live input captions streamed as
  transcription deltas while the user speaks, EOU-immediate commit with
  eagerness fallback, optional retranscribe gate (batch re-decode must
  also end in <EOU> to confirm), clause synthesis off the LLM token
  callback, and per-turn live-transcription / model_load telemetry.
- UI: show the realtime pipeline components as a vertical list.

Docs and tests included; opt-in via the pipeline YAML or per-session
`session.update`. Non-streaming STT backends degrade to silence-only.

Assisted-by: Claude Code:claude-opus-4-8 [Read] [Edit] [Write] [Bash]
Assisted-by: Claude Code:claude-fable-5 [Read] [Edit] [Bash]
Signed-off-by: Richard Palethorpe <io@richiejp.com>

* feat(realtime): explicit formally-verified state machines + parakeet streaming driver

The realtime API had several implicit state machines whose state was inferred
from scattered booleans, channels, and five separate mutexes, leaving
illegal/inconsistent states reachable. Make them explicit and keep the
implementation in step with a formal design; rework the parakeet streaming
backend along the same lines.

Realtime state machines (M1-M5). Each is a sealed sum-type State/Event/Effect
with a total, pure Next(state,event)->(state,[]effect) behind a single-writer
Coordinator:

  M1 conncoord    connection lifecycle: VAD toggle + once-only teardown
                  (replaces vadServerStarted + a `done` channel closed from
                  two sites).
  M2 turncoord    turn detection: collapses speechStarted and the live-stream
                  "turn open" flag into one state, so discardTurn can no longer
                  desync them and suppress the next onset.
  M3 respcoord    response coordination: serializes the dual-writer
                  start/cancel so at most one response is live; one
                  response.done per response.create.
  M4 compactcoord conversation compaction: single-flight (replaces the
                  `compacting atomic.Bool` CAS).
  M5 ttscoord     TTS pipeline: open->closing->closed, idempotent wait(),
                  rejects enqueue-after-close (was a silent drop).

The Coordinator/Sink/Next plumbing — only the sealed types and Next differed
per machine — is extracted once into core/http/endpoints/openai/coordinator as
a generic Coordinator[S,E,F]; each machine keeps its public API via type
aliases, so no sink, call-site, or test moved.

Hierarchy. session_lifecycle.fizz models M1 as the parent region with its
children (M2/M3/M4) as one statechart and asserts ChildrenDieWithParent (conn
torn => all children terminal, none start after teardown). respcoord and
compactcoord gain an absorbing Terminated state + Shutdown event; conncoord's
teardown drives the children terminal. This closes a compaction teardown gap: a
fire-and-forget compaction could outlive a torn session — compactionSink now
takes a session-scoped cancellable context + WaitGroup and joins the in-flight
summarize+evict on shutdown.

Formal verification. formal-verification/ holds one authoritative FizzBee spec
per machine plus the composition spec, each with an always-assertion and a
documented one-line edit that makes the checker fail (verified non-vacuous).
scripts/realtime-conformance.sh is fail-closed: all Go conformance suites under
-race AND a model-check of every .fizz spec; a missing FizzBee is a hard error
(only the loud REALTIME_CONFORMANCE_SKIP_FIZZBEE=1 bypasses it, never in CI).
FizzBee is pinned by sha256 and installed via scripts/install-fizzbee.sh into
.tools/ (gitignored). Wired as make test-realtime-conformance, a CI workflow,
and a pre-commit path filter. Go conformance tests are Ginkgo/Gomega (per the
repo's forbidigo lint): transition tables + fixed-seed property walks +
concurrent/-race specs, no rapid dependency. Design map:
docs/design/realtime-state-machines.md.

Parakeet streaming backend. The same treatment applied to the parakeet-cpp
streaming paths:
- AudioTranscriptionStream returns codes.Unimplemented for non-streaming models
  instead of decoding offline and emitting it as one delta + final. A client
  that asked for streaming learns the model cannot stream rather than receiving
  a batch result shaped like a stream. New grpcerrors.StreamTranscriptionUnsupported
  carries that signal; the HTTP /v1/audio/transcriptions stream path surfaces it
  as an SSE error event. Mirrors AudioTranscriptionLive, which already did this.
- utteranceBoundary (boundary.go): a single definition of the end-of-utterance
  latch, replacing three open-coded finalEou toggles. Modelled as a two-valued
  type so illegal states are unrepresentable.
- Shared decode driver (driver.go): streamFeedResult (one per-feed event) +
  feedChunk (hides the ABI v4 JSON vs text-only split) + feedSlices + flushTail.
  The feed loop is written once.
- AudioTranscriptionLive becomes a bidi adapter: it streams the per-feed
  {delta,eou,eob,words} the realtime turn detector consumes and a terminal
  FinalResult carrying only Text. Segments/duration/eou are offline-only and no
  longer produced (nor read) on the live path; liveTraceState drops the terminal
  eou and keeps the per-feed eou_events count.
- AudioTranscriptionStream + streamJSON merge into one driver-based function;
  streamSegmenter is generalized to the unified event with a text-only fallback
  that preserves the legacy (no-words) library's per-utterance segmentation.

Verified: build/vet/gofumpt clean, golangci-lint 0 issues, all coordinator and
parakeet packages under -race, the fail-closed conformance gate green, and
make test-realtime (12 e2e WS+WebRTC).

Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8 [Claude Code]
Signed-off-by: Richard Palethorpe <io@richiejp.com>

---------

Signed-off-by: Richard Palethorpe <io@richiejp.com>
2026-06-30 09:01:22 +02:00
..

Formal verification — realtime state machines

Formal designs (FizzBee specs) for the realtime API state machines and the harness that keeps the Go implementation provably in step with them. Background and rationale: ../docs/design/realtime-state-machines.md (Part 6).

The design is authoritative: behaviour changes go through the spec first, then the implementation is checked against it. The realtime-conformance gate makes that the path of least resistance — you cannot land a non-conforming change green.

What's here

File Role
response_lifecycle.fizz Authoritative FizzBee model of machine M3 (response coordination). Model-checked + drives the Go MBT conformance harness.
turn_lifecycle.fizz Authoritative FizzBee model of machine M2 (turn detection): the speechStarted / turn-open coupling.
conn_lifecycle.fizz Authoritative FizzBee model of machine M1 (connection lifecycle): VAD toggle + once-only teardown.
compaction.fizz Authoritative FizzBee model of machine M4 (conversation compaction): single-flight.
tts_pipeline.fizz Authoritative FizzBee model of machine M5 (TTS pipeline): open->closing->closed, idempotent close.
session_lifecycle.fizz Composition spec: the M1M5 hierarchy — conn (M1) is the parent; when it is torn down, every child (vad/M2, resp/M3, compaction/M4) is terminal. Models the relationship the per-machine specs can't express.
fizzbee.sha256 Pinned checksum(s) of the FizzBee release the gate uses (created on first install-fizzbee.sh run).

The implementations under test live in core/http/endpoints/openai/respcoord (M3), core/http/endpoints/openai/turncoord (M2), core/http/endpoints/openai/conncoord (M1), core/http/endpoints/openai/compactcoord (M4), and core/http/endpoints/openai/ttscoord (M5).

Running the gate

make test-realtime-conformance
# or directly:
./scripts/realtime-conformance.sh

Two layers, both required — the gate is fail-closed:

  1. Go-native conformance — the respcoord + turncoord + conncoord + compactcoord + ttscoord transition-table tests + Ginkgo/Gomega seeded property (random-walk) tests under -race (checks the implementation), plus the shared coordinator runtime they all build on. Also run as part of make test (they're ordinary Go packages with a Ginkgo suite each). The five machines reduce to their sealed State/Event/Effect types + a pure Next; the single-writer Coordinator/Sink plumbing lives once in core/http/endpoints/openai/coordinator (a generic Coordinator[S,E,F]).
  2. FizzBee model check — model-checks the authoritative .fizz specs (checks the design). A missing FizzBee is a hard failure, not a skip — otherwise the design verification silently disappears whenever the tool is inconvenient, which is the whole thing we're trying to prevent.

FizzBee is pinned and checksum-verified (fizzbee.sha256), so "couldn't install" is not a reason to skip — run make install-fizzbee. The only way to skip is the explicit, loud REALTIME_CONFORMANCE_SKIP_FIZZBEE=1 opt-out, intended for local work on unrelated code. CI never sets it, and pre-commit runs the full gate whenever respcoord/**, turncoord/**, conncoord/**, compactcoord/**, ttscoord/**, or formal-verification/** is staged (so a pure .fizz edit still re-verifies).

Installing FizzBee (pinned)

FizzBee is pre-1.0 and single-maintainer, so we pin a version + sha256 and use the prebuilt release tarball (its primary build is Bazel — it is not go-gettable: the pkg/modelchecker library imports the Bazel-internal fizz/proto with no committed .pb.go, so a plain go get won't build it).

make install-fizzbee                  # = scripts/install-fizzbee.sh (default v0.5.2)

The four platform assets are pinned by sha256 in fizzbee.sha256 (digests taken from the GitHub release); the installer verifies before extracting. Heads-up: the Linux bundles are large (~290350 MB, because parser_bin embeds a full runtime), macOS ~36 MB. CI caches .tools/fizzbee keyed on the pin so it downloads once.

This unpacks a self-contained directory under .tools/fizzbee/ (gitignored):

.tools/fizzbee/
  fizz                              -> stable symlink the gate auto-detects
  fizzbee-v0.5.2-linux_x86/
    fizz            # CLI wrapper (entrypoint)
    parser/parser_bin # the .fizz frontend, BUNDLED (no system Python needed)
    fizzbee         # Go model-checker binary
    fizz.env        # resolves the above paths relative to `fizz`
    mbt_gen.zip     # MBT generator (this one DOES need system python)

Keep the directory intact — fizz.env resolves its siblings relative to the fizz wrapper. The gate auto-detects .tools/fizzbee/fizz; override with FIZZBEE_BIN only if you installed elsewhere (point it at the fizz wrapper, not the raw fizzbee binary).

First install-fizzbee.sh run prints the computed sha256; record it in fizzbee.sha256 as <sha256> <asset> and commit so later runs verify the pin.

CLI facts (validate against the pinned version — FizzBee is pre-1.0): the CLI is fizz [flags] <spec.fizz> (default = exhaustive BFS); there is no run subcommand. The checker can print FAILED/DEADLOCK while still exiting 0, so the gate scans output for those markers in addition to the exit code. Model-checking needs only the bundled parser_bin (no Python); only mbt-scaffold shells out to system python.

Reproducing the bug the spec catches

Each spec models the correct design, so it passes; each documents how to reproduce the legacy bug it guards against:

  • response_lifecycle.fizz (M3): change atomic func start() to serial func start() — the checker reports AtMostOneLive violated (the dual-writer race). Pinned deterministically in Go by the respcoord "legacy dual-writer characterization" spec.
  • turn_lifecycle.fizz (M2): in Abort, delete self.speech = 0 (clear only the turn, as the legacy discardTurn did) — the checker reports Coupled violated (the speechStarted/turn-open desync that suppressed the next onset).
  • conn_lifecycle.fizz (M1): in Close, delete self.torn = 1 — the checker reports TeardownOnce violated (the legacy double-teardown / double-close hazard when a session reaches teardown from more than one exit path).
  • compaction.fizz (M4): in Trigger, delete the if self.active == 0: guard — the checker reports SingleFlight violated (two goroutines compacting the same overflow concurrently, the race the compacting CAS prevents).
  • tts_pipeline.fizz (M5): in Close, delete the if self.phase == 0 guard — the checker reports WakeOnce violated (a non-idempotent wait() that wakes / joins the worker more than once).
  • session_lifecycle.fizz (hierarchy): in Teardown, delete self.compaction = 2 — the checker reports ChildrenDieWithParent violated. This is the real M4 gap: a fire-and-forget compaction outliving the torn session. The fix is conncoord's teardown cancelling + joining each conversation's compaction (and respcoord/ compactcoord gained an absorbing Terminated state so no child can start after teardown).

Adding another machine

All five mapped machines (M1M5) have landed. To add a new sealed-state machine:

  1. Add <machine>.fizz here (with an always assertion; verify non-vacuity by breaking one guard and confirming the checker fails).
  2. Implement it as a sealed-state package under core/http/endpoints/openai/.
  3. Add transition-table + Ginkgo/Gomega seeded property conformance tests (one *_suite_test.go bootstrap per package; LocalAI mandates Ginkgo/Gomega).
  4. The gate picks up new *.fizz specs automatically; add the new Go package to the -race test list in scripts/realtime-conformance.sh (and the path filters in .githooks/pre-commit + .github/workflows/realtime-conformance.yml).