conversations come back as conversations

A probe on the torch stage worker (~/dockers/torch-worker) runs beside every
transcription and decides what the recording is: solo dictation returns as
paragraphs exactly as before, several voices return speaker-labeled with
conversation: true. Nobody declares which — the caller cannot know.

Transcription and the worker each get a serial FIFO queue on their own
resource, so the probe costs a solo memo nothing and multi-user traffic
stays fair. The worker is optional and best-effort throughout: unreachable
or failing, everything still transcribes, just never labeled.

Speaker attribution is segment-granularity by maximal turn overlap —
whisper.cpp's own timestamps, no alignment stage. If boundaries prove
sloppy, wav2vec2 alignment returns as a worker endpoint.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

sidecar/config.ts

@@ -15,7 +15,12 @@ import { DATA_PATH } from '@@/data-path';
 const CONFIG_DIR = join(DATA_PATH, 'transcribe');
 const CONFIG_PATH = join(CONFIG_DIR, 'config.json');
 
-export type TranscribeConfig = { url: string };
+export type TranscribeConfig = {
+  url: string;
+  /** The torch stage worker (diarization + conversation probe). Optional: without it the plugin
+   *  still transcribes, it just never labels speakers — degradation, not failure. */
+  workerUrl?: string;
+};
 
 // Cached across requests; invalidated only by `setConfig`. A single small file re-read on every
 // transcription would be a needless stat + parse on the hot path.
@@ -26,7 +31,9 @@ async function loadConfig(): Promise<TranscribeConfig | null> {
   if (!(await file.exists())) return null;
   try {
     const parsed = (await file.json()) as Partial<TranscribeConfig>;
-    return typeof parsed.url === 'string' && parsed.url ? { url: parsed.url } : null;
+    if (typeof parsed.url !== 'string' || !parsed.url) return null;
+    const workerUrl = typeof parsed.workerUrl === 'string' && parsed.workerUrl ? parsed.workerUrl : undefined;
+    return { url: parsed.url, ...(workerUrl ? { workerUrl } : {}) };
   } catch {
     return null;
   }