Files
ImageApi/README.md
Cameron Cordes 860169032b faces: phase 2 — schema + manual face/person CRUD
Land the persistence model and HTTP surface for local face recognition.
Inference still lives in Apollo (Phase 1); this side adds the data home
plus every endpoint Apollo's UI and FileViewer-React will consume.

Schema (new migration 2026-04-29-000000_add_faces):
  - persons: visual identities. Optional entity_id bridges to the
    existing knowledge-graph entities table; auto-bridging is left to
    the management UI (we don't muddy LLM provenance from face rows).
    UNIQUE(name COLLATE NOCASE) so 'alice' / 'Alice' fold to one row.
  - face_detections: keyed on content_hash (cross-library dedup), with
    status='detected' carrying bbox + 512-d embedding BLOB, and
    'no_faces' / 'failed' marker rows that tell Phase 3's file watcher
    not to re-scan. Marker invariant enforced via CHECK; partial UNIQUE
    on content_hash WHERE status='no_faces' guards against double-marks.

Schema regenerated with `diesel print-schema` against a clean migration
run; joinables added for face_detections → libraries / persons and
persons → entities.

face_client.rs (sibling of apollo_client.rs):
  - reqwest multipart, 60 s timeout (CPU inference on a backlog can be
    slow; bounded threadpool on Apollo serializes calls anyway).
  - FaceDetectError::{Permanent, Transient, Disabled} — Phase 3 keys
    its marker-row decision on this. 422 → mark failed, 5xx → defer.
  - APOLLO_FACE_API_BASE_URL falls back to APOLLO_API_BASE_URL when
    unset; both unset = is_enabled() false, callers no-op.

faces.rs (DAO + handlers):
  - SqliteFaceDao implements the full FaceDao trait; person face counts
    go through sql_query because diesel's BoxedSelectStatement +
    group_by trips trait-resolver recursion.
  - merge_persons re-points face rows in a transaction, copies notes
    when target's are empty, deletes src.
  - manual POST /image/faces resolves content_hash through image_exif,
    crops the user-drawn bbox with 10% padding (detector wants context
    around ears/jaw), POSTs the crop to face_client.embed for a real
    ArcFace vector, then inserts source='manual'.
  - Cluster-suggest (Phase 6) gets its data from
    GET /faces/embeddings — base64-encoded paged BLOBs so Apollo's
    DBSCAN can stream them without ImageApi pre-aggregating.

Endpoints registered alongside add_*_services in main.rs:
  GET    /faces/stats?library=
  GET    /faces/embeddings?library=&unassigned=&limit=&offset=
  GET    /image/faces?path=&library=
  POST   /image/faces                        (manual create via embed)
  PATCH  /image/faces/{id}
  DELETE /image/faces/{id}
  GET    /persons?library=
  POST   /persons
  GET    /persons/{id}
  PATCH  /persons/{id}
  DELETE /persons/{id}?cascade=set_null|delete   (set_null default)
  POST   /persons/{id}/merge
  GET    /persons/{id}/faces?library=

The file-watch hook (Phase 3) and the rerun-on-one-photo handler
(Phase 6) live behind the FaceDao methods marked dead_code today —
they're called only when those phases land. Same shape for the trait
methods that aren't reached by Phase 2 routes.

Tests: 3 DAO unit tests cover person CRUD + case-insensitive uniqueness,
marker-row idempotency (mark_status is a no-op when any row exists),
and merge re-pointing faces.

Cargo.toml: reqwest gains the `multipart` feature.

cargo build / cargo test --lib / cargo fmt / cargo clippy --all-targets
all clean for the new code; the two pre-existing test_path_excluder
failures and the pre-existing sort_by clippy warnings are unrelated and
present on master.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-29 18:03:42 +00:00

10 KiB

Image API

This is an Actix-web server for serving images and videos from a filesystem. Upon first run it will generate thumbnails for all images and videos at BASE_PATH.

Features

  • Automatic thumbnail generation for images and videos
  • EXIF data extraction and storage for photos
  • File watching with NFS support (polling-based)
  • Video streaming with HLS
  • Tag-based organization
  • Memories API for browsing photos by date
  • Video Wall - Auto-generated short preview clips for videos, served via a grid view
  • AI-Powered Photo Insights - Generate contextual insights from photos using LLMs
  • RAG-based Context Retrieval - Semantic search over daily conversation summaries
  • Automatic Daily Summaries - LLM-generated summaries of daily conversations with embeddings

External Dependencies

ffmpeg (required)

ffmpeg must be on PATH. It is used for:

  • HLS video streaming — transcoding/segmenting source videos into .m3u8 + .ts playlists
  • Video thumbnails — extracting a frame at the 3-second mark
  • Video preview clips — short looping previews for the Video Wall
  • HEIC / HEIF thumbnails — decoding Apple's HEIC format (your ffmpeg build must include libheif; most modern builds do)

Builds used in development: the gyan.dev full build on Windows, and distro ffmpeg packages on Linux work fine. If HEIC thumbnails silently fail, check ffmpeg -formats | grep heif to confirm HEIF support.

RAW photo thumbnails

RAW formats (ARW, NEF, CR2, CR3, DNG, RAF, ORF, RW2, PEF, SRW, TIFF) are thumbnailed by reading an embedded JPEG preview out of the TIFF container — no external RAW decoder (libraw / dcraw) is involved. The pipeline tries two layers in order and keeps the largest valid JPEG:

  1. Fast path (no extra dependency)kamadak-exif reads JPEGInterchangeFormat from IFD0 / IFD1 directly. Covers older bodies and most DNGs.
  2. exiftool fallback (recommended for RAW-heavy libraries) — shells out to extract PreviewImage / JpgFromRaw / OtherImage, which reaches MakerNote and SubIFD-hosted previews kamadak-exif can't see (e.g. Nikon's PreviewIFD, where modern Nikon bodies stash the full-res review JPEG). If exiftool isn't on PATH this layer is skipped silently and only the fast-path result is used.

Install exiftool via your package manager:

  • macOS: brew install exiftool
  • Linux (Debian/Ubuntu): apt install libimage-exiftool-perl
  • Windows: winget install OliverBetz.ExifTool or choco install exiftool

Files where neither layer produces a valid preview fall back to ffmpeg. Anything that still can't be decoded is marked with a <thumb>.unsupported sentinel in the thumbnail directory so we don't retry it every scan. Delete those sentinels (and any cached black thumbnails) to force retries after a tooling upgrade.

Environment

There are a handful of required environment variables to have the API run. They should be defined where the binary is located or above it in an .env file.

  • DATABASE_URL is a path or url to a database (currently only SQLite is tested)
  • BASE_PATH is the root from which you want to serve images and videos
  • THUMBNAILS is a path where generated thumbnails should be stored. Thumbnails mirror the source tree under BASE_PATH and keep the source's original extension (e.g. foo.arw or bar.mp4), though the file contents are always JPEG bytes — browsers content-sniff. Files that can't be thumbnailed by the image crate, ffmpeg, or an embedded RAW preview get a zero-byte <thumb_path>.unsupported sentinel in this directory so subsequent scans skip them. Delete the *.unsupported files to force retries (for example after upgrading ffmpeg or adding libheif)
  • VIDEO_PATH is a path where HLS playlists and video parts should be stored
  • GIFS_DIRECTORY is a path where generated video GIF thumbnails should be stored
  • BIND_URL is the url and port to bind to (typically your own IP address)
  • SECRET_KEY is the hopefully random string to sign Tokens with
  • RUST_LOG is one of off, error, warn, info, debug, trace, from least to most noisy [error is default]
  • EXCLUDED_DIRS is a comma separated list of directories to exclude from the Memories API
  • PREVIEW_CLIPS_DIRECTORY (optional) is a path where generated video preview clips should be stored [default: preview_clips]
  • WATCH_QUICK_INTERVAL_SECONDS (optional) is the interval in seconds for quick file scans [default: 60]
  • WATCH_FULL_INTERVAL_SECONDS (optional) is the interval in seconds for full file scans [default: 3600]

AI Insights Configuration (Optional)

The following environment variables configure AI-powered photo insights and daily conversation summaries:

Ollama Configuration

  • OLLAMA_PRIMARY_URL - Primary Ollama server URL [default: http://localhost:11434]
    • Example: http://desktop:11434 (your main/powerful server)
  • OLLAMA_FALLBACK_URL - Fallback Ollama server URL (optional)
    • Example: http://server:11434 (always-on backup server)
  • OLLAMA_PRIMARY_MODEL - Model to use on primary server [default: nemotron-3-nano:30b]
    • Example: nemotron-3-nano:30b, llama3.2:3b, etc.
  • OLLAMA_FALLBACK_MODEL - Model to use on fallback server (optional)
    • If not set, uses OLLAMA_PRIMARY_MODEL on fallback server

Legacy Variables (still supported):

  • OLLAMA_URL - Used if OLLAMA_PRIMARY_URL not set
  • OLLAMA_MODEL - Used if OLLAMA_PRIMARY_MODEL not set

OpenRouter Configuration (Hybrid Backend)

The hybrid agentic backend keeps embeddings + vision local (Ollama) while routing chat + tool-calling to OpenRouter. Enabled per-request when the client sends backend=hybrid.

  • OPENROUTER_API_KEY - OpenRouter API key. Required to enable the hybrid backend.
  • OPENROUTER_DEFAULT_MODEL - Model id used when the client doesn't specify one [default: anthropic/claude-sonnet-4]
    • Example: openai/gpt-4o-mini, google/gemini-2.5-flash
  • OPENROUTER_ALLOWED_MODELS - Comma-separated curated allowlist exposed to clients via GET /insights/openrouter/models. The mobile picker shows only these. Empty/unset = no picker, server default is used.
    • Example: openai/gpt-4o-mini,anthropic/claude-haiku-4-5,google/gemini-2.5-flash
  • OPENROUTER_BASE_URL - Override base URL [default: https://openrouter.ai/api/v1]
  • OPENROUTER_EMBEDDING_MODEL - Embedding model for OpenRouter [default: openai/text-embedding-3-small]. Only used if/when embeddings are routed through OpenRouter (currently embeddings stay local).
  • OPENROUTER_HTTP_REFERER - Optional HTTP-Referer for OpenRouter attribution
  • OPENROUTER_APP_TITLE - Optional X-Title for OpenRouter attribution

Capability checks are skipped for the curated allowlist — bad model ids surface as a 4xx from the chat call. Pick tool-capable models.

SMS API Configuration

  • SMS_API_URL - URL to SMS message API [default: http://localhost:8000]
    • Used to fetch conversation data for context in insights
  • SMS_API_TOKEN - Authentication token for SMS API (optional)

Agentic Insight Generation

  • AGENTIC_MAX_ITERATIONS - Maximum tool-call iterations per agentic insight request [default: 10]
    • Controls how many times the model can invoke tools before being forced to produce a final answer
    • Increase for more thorough context gathering; decrease to limit response time

Insight Chat Continuation

After an agentic insight is generated, the conversation can be continued. Endpoints:

  • POST /insights/chat — single-turn reply (non-streaming)
  • POST /insights/chat/stream — SSE variant with live text deltas and tool_call / tool_result events. Mobile client uses this.
  • GET /insights/chat/history?path=...&library=... — rendered transcript; each assistant message carries a tools: [{name, arguments, result}] array
  • POST /insights/chat/rewind — truncate transcript at a rendered index (drops that message + any preceding tool scaffolding + later turns). Used for "try again from here" flows. The initial user message is protected.

Amend mode (amend: true in the chat request body) regenerates the insight's title and inserts a new row instead of appending to the existing transcript, so you can rewrite the saved summary from within chat.

  • AGENTIC_CHAT_MAX_ITERATIONS - Cap on tool-calling iterations per chat turn [default: 6]
    • Per-request max_iterations (when sent by the client) is clamped to this cap

Fallback Behavior

  • Primary server is tried first with 5-second connection timeout
  • On failure, automatically falls back to secondary server (if configured)
  • Total request timeout is 120 seconds to accommodate LLM inference
  • Logs indicate which server/model was used and any failover attempts

Daily Summary Generation

Daily conversation summaries are generated automatically on server startup. Configure in src/main.rs:

  • Date range for summary generation
  • Contacts to process
  • Model version used for embeddings: nomic-embed-text:v1.5

Apollo + Face Recognition (Optional)

Apollo (sibling project) hosts both the Places API and the local insightface inference service. Both integrations are optional and degrade gracefully when unset.

  • APOLLO_API_BASE_URL - Base URL of the sibling Apollo backend.
    • When set, photo-insight enrichment folds the user's personal place name (Home, Work, Cabin, ...) into the location string, and the agentic loop gains a get_personal_place_at tool. Unset = legacy Nominatim-only path.
  • APOLLO_FACE_API_BASE_URL - Base URL for the face-detection service.
    • Falls back to APOLLO_API_BASE_URL when unset (typical single-Apollo deploy). Both unset = face feature disabled (file-watch hook and manual-face endpoints short-circuit silently).
  • FACE_AUTOBIND_MIN_COS (Phase 3) - Cosine-sim floor for auto-binding a detected face to an existing same-named person via people-tag bootstrap [default: 0.4].
  • FACE_DETECT_CONCURRENCY (Phase 3) - Per-scan-tick concurrent detect calls fired by the file watcher [default: 8]. Apollo serializes them via its single-worker GPU pool.
  • FACE_DETECT_TIMEOUT_SEC - reqwest client timeout per detect call [default: 60]. CPU inference on a backlog can take many seconds.