* fix(distributed): detect backend upgrades across worker nodes
Before this change `DistributedBackendManager.CheckUpgrades` delegated to the
local manager, which read backends from the frontend filesystem. In
distributed deployments the frontend has no backends installed locally —
they live on workers — so the upgrade-detection loop never ran and the UI
silently never surfaced upgrades even when the gallery advertised newer
versions or digests.
Worker-side: NATS backend.list reply now carries Version, URI and Digest
for each installed backend (read from metadata.json).
Frontend-side: DistributedBackendManager.ListBackends aggregates per-node
refs (name, status, version, digest) instead of deduping, and CheckUpgrades
feeds that aggregation into gallery.CheckUpgradesAgainst — a new entrypoint
factored out of CheckBackendUpgrades so both paths share the same core
logic.
Cluster drift policy: when per-node version/digest tuples disagree, the
backend is flagged upgradeable regardless of whether any single node
matches the gallery, and UpgradeInfo.NodeDrift enumerates the outliers so
operators can see *why* it is out of sync. The next upgrade-all realigns
the cluster.
Tests cover: drift detection, unanimous-match (no upgrade), and the
empty-installed-version path that the old distributed code silently
missed.
* feat(ui): surface backend upgrades in the System page
The System page (Manage.jsx) only showed updates as a tiny inline arrow,
so operators routinely missed them. Port the Backend Gallery's upgrade UX
so System speaks the same visual language:
- Yellow banner at the top of the Backends tab when upgrades are pending,
with an "Upgrade all" button (serial fan-out, matches the gallery) and a
"Updates only" filter toggle.
- Warning pill (↑ N) next to the tab label so the count is glanceable even
when the banner is scrolled out of view.
- Per-row labeled "Upgrade to vX.Y" button (replaces the icon-only button
that silently flipped semantics between Reinstall and Upgrade), plus an
"Update available" badge in the new Version column.
- New columns: Version (with upgrade + drift chips), Nodes (per-node
attribution badges for distributed mode, degrading to a compact
"on N nodes · M offline" chip above three nodes), Installed (relative
time).
- System backends render a "Protected" chip instead of a bare "—" so rows
still align and the reason is obvious.
- Delete uses the softer btn-danger-ghost so rows don't scream red; the
ConfirmDialog still owns the "are you sure".
The upgrade checker also needed the same per-worker fix as the previous
commit: NewUpgradeChecker now takes a BackendManager getter so its
periodic runs call the distributed CheckUpgrades (which asks workers)
instead of the empty frontend filesystem. Without this the /api/backends/
upgrades endpoint stayed empty in distributed mode even with the protocol
change in place.
New CSS primitives — .upgrade-banner, .tab-pill, .badge-row, .cell-stack,
.cell-mono, .cell-muted, .row-actions, .btn-danger-ghost — all live in
App.css so other pages can adopt them without duplicating styles.
* feat(ui): polish the Nodes page so it reads like a product
The Nodes page was the biggest visual liability in distributed mode.
Rework the main dashboard surfaces in place without changing behavior:
StatCards: uniform height (96px min), left accent bar colored by the
metric's semantic (success/warning/error/primary), icon lives in a
36x36 soft-tinted chip top-right, value is left-aligned and large.
Grid auto-fills so the row doesn't collapse on narrow viewports. This
replaces the previous thin-bordered boxes with inconsistent heights.
Table rows: expandable rows now show a chevron cue on the left (rotates
on expand) so users know rows open. Status cell became a dedicated chip
with an LED-style halo dot instead of a bare bullet. Action buttons gained
labels — "Approve", "Resume", "Drain" — so the icons aren't doing all
the semantic work; the destructive remove action uses the softer
btn-danger-ghost variant so rows don't scream red, with the ConfirmDialog
still owning the real "are you sure". Applied cell-mono/cell-muted
utility classes so label chips and addresses share one spacing/font
grammar instead of re-declaring inline styles everywhere.
Expanded drawer: empty states for Loaded Models and Installed Backends
now render as a proper drawer-empty card (dashed border, icon, one-line
hint) instead of a plain muted string that read like broken formatting.
Tabs: three inline-styled buttons became the shared .tab class so they
inherit focus ring, hover state, and the rest of the design system —
matches the System page.
"Add more workers" toggle turned into a .nodes-add-worker dashed-border
button labelled "Register a new worker" (action voice) instead of a
chevron + muted link that operators kept mistaking for broken text.
New shared CSS primitives carry over to other pages:
.stat-grid + .stat-card, .row-chevron, .node-status, .drawer-empty,
.nodes-add-worker.
* feat(distributed): durable backend fan-out + state reconciliation
Two connected problems handled together:
1) Backend delete/install/upgrade used to silently skip non-healthy nodes,
so a delete during an outage left a zombie on the offline node once it
returned. The fan-out now records intent in a new pending_backend_ops
table before attempting the NATS round-trip. Currently-healthy nodes
get an immediate attempt; everyone else is queued. Unique index on
(node_id, backend, op) means reissuing the same operation refreshes
next_retry_at instead of stacking duplicates.
2) Loaded-model state could drift from reality: a worker OOM'd, got
killed, or restarted a backend process would leave a node_models row
claiming the model was still loaded, feeding ghost entries into the
/api/nodes/models listing and the router's scheduling decisions.
The existing ReplicaReconciler gains two new passes that run under a
fresh KeyStateReconciler advisory lock (non-blocking, so one wedged
frontend doesn't freeze the cluster):
- drainPendingBackendOps: retries queued ops whose next_retry_at has
passed on currently-healthy nodes. Success deletes the row; failure
bumps attempts and pushes next_retry_at out with exponential backoff
(30s → 15m cap). ErrNoResponders also marks the node unhealthy.
- probeLoadedModels: gRPC-HealthChecks addresses the DB thinks are
loaded but hasn't seen touched in the last probeStaleAfter (2m).
Unreachable addresses are removed from the registry. A pluggable
ModelProber lets tests substitute a fake without standing up gRPC.
DistributedBackendManager exposes DeleteBackendDetailed so the HTTP
handler can surface per-node outcomes ("2 succeeded, 1 queued") to the
UI in a follow-up commit; the existing DeleteBackend still returns
error-only for callers that don't care about node breakdown.
Multi-frontend safety: the state pass uses advisorylock.TryWithLockCtx
on a new key so N frontends coordinate — the same pattern the health
monitor and replica reconciler already rely on. Single-node mode runs
both passes inline (adapter is nil, state drain is a no-op).
Tests cover the upsert semantics, backoff math, the probe removing an
unreachable model but keeping a reachable one, and filtering by
probeStaleAfter.
* feat(ui): show cluster distribution of models in the System page
When a frontend restarted in distributed mode, models that workers had
already loaded weren't visible until the operator clicked into each node
manually — the /api/models/capabilities endpoint only knew about
configs on the frontend's filesystem, not the registry-backed truth.
/api/models/capabilities now joins in ListAllLoadedModels() when the
registry is active, returning loaded_on[] with node id/name/state/status
for each model. Models that live in the registry but lack a local config
(the actual ghosts, not recovered from the frontend's file cache) still
surface with source="registry-only" so operators can see and persist
them; without that emission they'd be invisible to this frontend.
Manage → Models replaces the old Running/Idle pill with a distribution
cell that lists the first three nodes the model is loaded on as chips
colored by state (green loaded, blue loading, amber anything else). On
wider clusters the remaining count collapses into a +N chip with a
title-attribute breakdown. Disabled / single-node behavior unchanged.
Adopted models get an extra "Adopted" ghost-icon chip with hover copy
explaining what it means and how to make it permanent.
Distributed mode also enables a 10s auto-refresh and a "Last synced Xs
ago" indicator next to the Update button so ghost rows drop off within
one reconcile tick after their owning process dies. Non-distributed
mode is untouched — no polling, no cell-stack, same old Running/Idle.
* feat(ui): NodeDistributionChip — shared per-node attribution component
Large clusters were going to break the Manage → Backends Nodes column:
the old inline logic rendered every node as a badge and would shred the
layout at >10 workers, plus the Manage → Models distribution cell had
copy-pasted its own slightly-different version.
NodeDistributionChip handles any cluster size with two render modes:
- small (≤3 nodes): inline chips of node names, colored by health.
- large: a single "on N nodes · M offline · K drift" summary chip;
clicking opens a Popover with a per-node table (name, status,
version, digest for backends; name, status, state for models).
Drift counting mirrors the backend's summarizeNodeDrift so the UI
number matches UpgradeInfo.NodeDrift. Digests are truncated to the
docker-style 12-char form with the full value preserved in the title.
Popover is a new general-purpose primitive: fixed positioning anchored
to the trigger, flips above when there's no room below, closes on
outside-click or Escape, returns focus to the trigger. Uses .card as
its surface so theming is inherited. Also useful for a future
labels-editor popup and the user menu.
Manage.jsx drops its duplicated inline Nodes-column + loaded_on cell
and uses the shared chip with context="backends" / "models"
respectively. Delete code removes ~40 lines of ad-hoc logic.
* feat(ui): shared FilterBar across the System page tabs
The Backends gallery had a nice search + chip + toggle strip; the System
page had nothing, so the two surfaces felt like different apps. Lift the
pattern into a reusable FilterBar and wire both System tabs through it.
New component core/http/react-ui/src/components/FilterBar.jsx renders a
search input, a role="tablist" chip row (aria-selected for a11y), and
optional toggles / right slot. Chips support an optional `count` which
the System page uses to show "User 3", "Updates 1" etc.
System Models tab: search by id or backend; chips for
All/Running/Idle/Disabled/Pinned plus a conditional Distributed chip in
distributed mode. "Last synced" + Update button live in the right slot.
System Backends tab: search by name/alias/meta-backend-for; chips for
All/User/System/Meta plus conditional Updates / Offline-nodes chips
when relevant. The old ad-hoc "Updates only" toggle from the upgrade
banner folded into the Updates chip — one source of truth for that
filter. Offline chip only appears in distributed mode when at least
one backend has an unhealthy node, so the chip row stays quiet on
healthy clusters.
Filter state persists in URL query params (mq/mf/bq/bf) so deep links
and tab switches keep the operator's filter context instead of
resetting every time.
Also adds an "Adopted" distribution path: when a model in
/api/models/capabilities carries source="registry-only" (discovered on
a worker but not configured locally), the Models tab shows a ghost chip
labelled "Adopted" with hover copy explaining how to persist it — this
is what closes the loop on the ghost-model story end-to-end.
|
||
|---|---|---|
| .agents | ||
| .devcontainer | ||
| .devcontainer-scripts | ||
| .github | ||
| .vscode | ||
| backend | ||
| cmd | ||
| configuration | ||
| core | ||
| custom-ca-certs | ||
| docs | ||
| examples | ||
| gallery | ||
| internal | ||
| pkg | ||
| prompt-templates | ||
| scripts | ||
| swagger | ||
| tests | ||
| .air.toml | ||
| .dockerignore | ||
| .editorconfig | ||
| .env | ||
| .gitattributes | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| .gitmodules | ||
| .goreleaser.yaml | ||
| .yamllint | ||
| AGENTS.md | ||
| CLAUDE.md | ||
| CONTRIBUTING.md | ||
| docker-compose.distributed.yaml | ||
| docker-compose.yaml | ||
| Dockerfile | ||
| Entitlements.plist | ||
| entrypoint.sh | ||
| go.mod | ||
| go.sum | ||
| LICENSE | ||
| Makefile | ||
| README.md | ||
| renovate.json | ||
| SECURITY.md | ||
| webui_static.yaml | ||
LocalAI is the open-source AI engine. Run any model - LLMs, vision, voice, image, video - on any hardware. No GPU required.
- Drop-in API compatibility — OpenAI, Anthropic, ElevenLabs APIs
- 36+ backends — llama.cpp, vLLM, transformers, whisper, diffusers, MLX...
- Any hardware — NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Apple Silicon, Vulkan, or CPU-only
- Multi-user ready — API key auth, user quotas, role-based access
- Built-in AI agents — autonomous agents with tool use, RAG, MCP, and skills
- Privacy-first — your data never leaves your infrastructure
Created and maintained by Ettore Di Giacinto.
📖 Documentation | 💬 Discord | 💻 Quickstart | 🖼️ Models | ❓FAQ
Guided tour
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/08cbb692-57da-48f7-963d-2e7b43883c18
Click to see more!
User and auth
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/228fa9ad-81a3-4d43-bfb9-31557e14a36c
Agents
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6270b331-e21d-4087-a540-6290006b381a
Usage metrics per user
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/cbb03379-23b4-4e3d-bd26-d152f057007f
Fine-tuning and Quantization
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5ba4ace9-d3df-4795-b7d4-b0b404ea71ee
WebRTC
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ed88e34c-fed3-4b83-8a67-4716a9feeb7b
Quickstart
macOS
Note: The DMG is not signed by Apple. After installing, run:
sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/LocalAI.app. See #6268 for details.
Containers (Docker, podman, ...)
Already ran LocalAI before? Use
docker start -i local-aito restart an existing container.
CPU only:
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 localai/localai:latest
NVIDIA GPU:
# CUDA 13
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --gpus all localai/localai:latest-gpu-nvidia-cuda-13
# CUDA 12
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --gpus all localai/localai:latest-gpu-nvidia-cuda-12
# NVIDIA Jetson ARM64 (CUDA 12, for AGX Orin and similar)
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --gpus all localai/localai:latest-nvidia-l4t-arm64
# NVIDIA Jetson ARM64 (CUDA 13, for DGX Spark)
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --gpus all localai/localai:latest-nvidia-l4t-arm64-cuda-13
AMD GPU (ROCm):
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --device=/dev/kfd --device=/dev/dri --group-add=video localai/localai:latest-gpu-hipblas
Intel GPU (oneAPI):
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 --device=/dev/dri/card1 --device=/dev/dri/renderD128 localai/localai:latest-gpu-intel
Vulkan GPU:
docker run -ti --name local-ai -p 8080:8080 localai/localai:latest-gpu-vulkan
Loading models
# From the model gallery (see available models with `local-ai models list` or at https://models.localai.io)
local-ai run llama-3.2-1b-instruct:q4_k_m
# From Huggingface
local-ai run huggingface://TheBloke/phi-2-GGUF/phi-2.Q8_0.gguf
# From the Ollama OCI registry
local-ai run ollama://gemma:2b
# From a YAML config
local-ai run https://gist.githubusercontent.com/.../phi-2.yaml
# From a standard OCI registry (e.g., Docker Hub)
local-ai run oci://localai/phi-2:latest
Automatic Backend Detection: LocalAI automatically detects your GPU capabilities and downloads the appropriate backend. For advanced options, see GPU Acceleration.
For more details, see the Getting Started guide.
Latest News
- March 2026: Agent management, New React UI, WebRTC, MLX-distributed via P2P and RDMA, MCP Apps, MCP Client-side
- February 2026: Realtime API for audio-to-audio with tool calling, ACE-Step 1.5 support
- January 2026: LocalAI 3.10.0 — Anthropic API support, Open Responses API, video & image generation (LTX-2), unified GPU backends, tool streaming, Moonshine, Pocket-TTS. Release notes
- December 2025: Dynamic Memory Resource reclaimer, Automatic multi-GPU model fitting (llama.cpp), Vibevoice backend
- November 2025: Import models via URL, Multiple chats and history
- October 2025: Model Context Protocol (MCP) support for agentic capabilities
- September 2025: New Launcher for macOS and Linux, extended backend support for Mac and Nvidia L4T, MLX-Audio, WAN 2.2
- August 2025: MLX, MLX-VLM, Diffusers, llama.cpp now supported on Apple Silicon
- July 2025: All backends migrated outside the main binary — lightweight, modular architecture
For older news and full release notes, see GitHub Releases and the News page.
Features
- Text generation (
llama.cpp,transformers,vllm... and more) - Text to Audio
- Audio to Text
- Image generation
- OpenAI-compatible tools API
- Realtime API (Speech-to-speech)
- Embeddings generation
- Constrained grammars
- Download models from Huggingface
- Vision API
- Object Detection
- Reranker API
- P2P Inferencing
- Distributed Mode — Horizontal scaling with PostgreSQL + NATS
- Model Context Protocol (MCP)
- Built-in Agents — Autonomous AI agents with tool use, RAG, skills, SSE streaming, and Agent Hub
- Backend Gallery — Install/remove backends on the fly via OCI images
- Voice Activity Detection (Silero-VAD)
- Integrated WebUI
Supported Backends & Acceleration
LocalAI supports 36+ backends including llama.cpp, vLLM, transformers, whisper.cpp, diffusers, MLX, MLX-VLM, and many more. Hardware acceleration is available for NVIDIA (CUDA 12/13), AMD (ROCm), Intel (oneAPI/SYCL), Apple Silicon (Metal), Vulkan, and NVIDIA Jetson (L4T). All backends can be installed on-the-fly from the Backend Gallery.
See the full Backend & Model Compatibility Table and GPU Acceleration guide.
Resources
- Documentation
- LLM fine-tuning guide
- Build from source
- Kubernetes installation
- Integrations & community projects
- Installation video walkthrough
- Media & blog posts
- Examples
Autonomous Development Team
LocalAI is helped being maintained by a team of autonomous AI agents led by an AI Scrum Master.
- Live Reports: reports.localai.io
- Project Board: Agent task tracking
- Blog Post: Learn about the experiment
Citation
If you utilize this repository, data in a downstream project, please consider citing it with:
@misc{localai,
author = {Ettore Di Giacinto},
title = {LocalAI: The free, Open source OpenAI alternative},
year = {2023},
publisher = {GitHub},
journal = {GitHub repository},
howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/go-skynet/LocalAI}},
Sponsors
Do you find LocalAI useful?
Support the project by becoming a backer or sponsor. Your logo will show up here with a link to your website.
A huge thank you to our generous sponsors who support this project covering CI expenses, and our Sponsor list:
Individual sponsors
A special thanks to individual sponsors, a full list is on GitHub and buymeacoffee. Special shout out to drikster80 for being generous. Thank you everyone!
Star history
License
LocalAI is a community-driven project created by Ettore Di Giacinto.
MIT - Author Ettore Di Giacinto mudler@localai.io
Acknowledgements
LocalAI couldn't have been built without the help of great software already available from the community. Thank you!
- llama.cpp
- https://github.com/tatsu-lab/stanford_alpaca
- https://github.com/cornelk/llama-go for the initial ideas
- https://github.com/antimatter15/alpaca.cpp
- https://github.com/EdVince/Stable-Diffusion-NCNN
- https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp
- https://github.com/rhasspy/piper
- exo for the MLX distributed auto-parallel sharding implementation
Contributors
This is a community project, a special thanks to our contributors!