every transcription on this machine failed with "Language detection failed
(400)" before it started. the server was fine — it had answered /inference
correctly minutes earlier — and the platform was fine. the plugin's FIRST
call sends detect_language=true, which is a whisper.cpp parameter, and
whisperx answers 400 to it.
so a pass that exists to HELP became the only thing that could fail, on a
backend that does its own detection anyway. whisperx logs "No language
specified, language will be detected for each audio file" and gets it
right per file.
a backend refusing that request is telling us it detects for itself. skip
the pass, send no `language`, and read back whatever the transcription
reports. the two-pass path is untouched for whisper.cpp, which needs it,
and the spoken-language tie-break still applies wherever detection runs.
no prompt priming when the language is unknown either — TRANSCRIPT_PROMPTS
is keyed by language, and priming with the wrong one is worse than not
priming.
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>
Moves platform STT out into a plugin that owns the whole whisper.cpp contract: sidecar,
config (a JSON file under DATA_PATH/transcribe/, validated against the server before
storing), a thin proxy router, a skill so an agent knows the contract without being told,
and a script-mode file-browser task (not agentic — no model turn per audio file).
sidecar/transcribe.ts and its test moved unchanged from src/servers/api/stt/ — every
constant in it has a reason attached and none of it was touched.
The platform-side removal (routes, dead useAudioRecording path, Settings screen, locale
keys) lands in a separate, uncommitted change in the platform repo for review.
Not yet reachable from the file browser: the platform does not load tasks from a plugin's
directory yet (skills/affordances/notifications do). Ships anyway per instructions.
Officer-Session: 656f5c85-e49a-4f1f-b9f3-042a04b4d043