Three changes to reduce voice-note transcription latency on the VPS:
- Model: large-v3 -> distil-large-v3 (~6x faster, near-identical English
accuracy; language is already hardcoded "en").
- beam_size: 5 (default) -> 1 (~3-4x faster on clean audio).
- cpu_threads: 8 -> 4 (the box has 8 cores running api, dreamer, watcher,
nextcloud concurrently; ctranslate2's inter-op pool plus context switching
makes 4 effectively faster than 8 here).
Combined effect expected ~10-15x over prior config. No accuracy regression
expected for the voice-note use case (English, clean audio, domain terms
already supplied via initial_prompt).
Consolidates four extract paths and two extract-chunk-embed-write pipelines
into a single shared encoding module. Fixes the embedder lifecycle
divergence between watcher and /api/reindex (no more 200MB reload per
reindex click) and unifies failure tracking so /api/reindex failures now
surface in SettingsPanel "Ingest Health".
New files:
- scripts/encoding.py — extract_text, chunk_text, chunk_and_embed,
write_embeddings_batch
- scripts/failures.py — record_ingest_failure, resolve_ingest_failure
(shared by watcher.py and ingest.py)
Refactored:
- scripts/watcher.py — drops local extract/chunk/embed implementations
and CHUNK_SIZE/CHUNK_OVERLAP/SUPPORTED constants; imports from encoding
and failures. Now writes ingest_failures row on empty-text-extract
(was silent return 0).
- scripts/ingest.py — substantial rewrite. Exposes ingest_directory(folder,
embedder=None) for in-process invocation; CLI back-compat preserved via
ingest_folder wrapper. Module-level SentenceTransformer load removed.
- scripts/corpus_integrity.py — imports extract_text from encoding;
extract_text_for_retry function removed.
- scripts/api.py — /api/reindex rewritten with BackgroundTasks (uses
module-level embedder; no subprocess); new /api/reindex/status endpoint
reading ~/aaronai/reindex_status.json; /api/corpus/retry imports
extract_text from encoding; INGEST_SCRIPT constant removed (dead after
this refactor); 409 reentrance guard prevents double-click stomping.
Behavior changes:
- /api/reindex no longer subprocess.Popens; runs in FastAPI BackgroundTasks
threadpool, doesn't block API thread.
- /api/reindex no longer reloads SentenceTransformer on each click.
- /api/reindex failures newly write to ingest_failures (visible in
SettingsPanel "Ingest Health" — badge will jump on first reindex).
- New embeddings rows always have created_at = NOW() (canonical, server-side).
- New embeddings rows always include metadata.folder field (None when not
derivable).
- /api/reindex returns 409 on second click while a job is running.
- New /api/reindex/status endpoint for polling.
Existing 9,815 NULL created_at rows remain unchanged; backfill is a
separate decision if desired.
199 insertions, 256 deletions across 6 files (codebase shrinks net).
Found by Track 1 inventory 2026-05-02 (Finding 11 / cross-cutting F11).
Pre-commit verification: BackgroundTasks already imported, sys.path
resolves correctly via script-path semantics, static import clean.
- Fix /auth/check endpoint that referenced undefined SESSIONS
(Phase 1 finding — would NameError 500 on every call). Now uses
session_exists(token), the live session-validation mechanism
defined elsewhere in api.py.
- Remove unused DB_PATH ChromaDB-era constant (paired with the
ChromaDB directory deletion and aaronai-maintenance.service
removal earlier this session).
Found by Track 1 inventory 2026-05-02. Cross-repo verification of
share_time (third candidate from the original cleanup proposal)
revealed it is working stores-and-returns persistence rather than
dead code; share_time intentionally not modified.
Inventory document edits are committed separately under the docs/
tracking decision.
The dream_mode setting was defined in DEFAULT_SETTINGS and watched
by update_settings for reschedule, but run_dream_job never read it —
silently-ignored configuration.
Two changes:
1. DEFAULT_SETTINGS["dream_mode"] flipped from "nrem" to "pipeline".
The default was a latent regression vector: wiring up the setting
without changing the default would have silently switched all
default-config users from full-pipeline (current production
behavior) to NREM-only nightly runs.
2. run_dream_job reads dream_mode at fire-time, validates against
{"pipeline", "nrem", "early-rem", "late-rem"}, falls back to
pipeline with a warning on invalid values. Lucid intentionally
excluded — it is on-demand only by design and remains available
via CLI and /api/dreamer/run.
Nightly dream production behavior is unchanged for current users
(no settings.json key → default "pipeline" → no flag passed → same
as before). Users can now meaningfully change the nightly mode by
editing settings.json or via the SettingsPanel.
Found by Track 1 inventory 2026-05-02 (Finding 9 / divergence #9).
The F14 fix on 2026-05-01 removed text[:50000] truncation from
watcher.py, ingest.py, and corpus_integrity.py. The retry endpoint
in api.py was missed — clicking 'Retry' on an ingest-failed file
in the SettingsPanel re-introduced the exact truncation pattern
F14 was meant to eliminate.
Found by Track 1 inventory 2026-05-02 (Finding 2 / divergence #2).
- api.py: strip CV pinning workaround (parity violation, see architecture doc)
- dream.py: F1 — retrieve_graphiti() now accepts excluded_sources, over-fetches
3x and filters in-process. Was silently dropping the parameter; would have
confounded E3 with broken cross-stage exclusion in Graphiti arm.
- watcher.py + ingest.py: F14 — drop full_text[:50000] truncation. Was
propagating through entire cascade. Postgres TEXT can hold up to 1GB.
- corpus_integrity.py: F37 — same truncation, third path now clean.
Backups: api.py.bak.*, dream.py.bak.*, watcher.py.bak.*, ingest.py.bak.*,
corpus_integrity.py.bak.* timestamped pre-fix.
Re-cascaded Shop Class as Soulcraft (only already-cascaded source affected
by F14, 414KB).
aaron