LAN and nodes
Hand a job to another computer, or share the compute of this one.
How a job travels
- Your computer (the client) uploads the media to a node in chunks, with progress and resume.
- The node transcribes with its own models, one job at a time.
- The result comes back and joins the same history as your local jobs.
Two compute modes
Local only
Every job runs on this machine. The network is never touched.
Prefer LAN
Jobs go to a LAN node by default. If no node is available or a job fails, it falls back to a local model and is marked as such.
Nodes
A node is local-transcribe-node on another computer. It can share its own model library, so the client does not need that model installed.
- Find nodes by scanning the network, or add a host and port by hand.
- Read the node's model list and pick which model it should use for a job.
- Any interface works: Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB networking, VPN, and Tailscale.
- The Tailscale range does not broadcast mDNS, so those nodes are added by hand. That does not change the unauthenticated boundary below.
Nodes that stay up
A node is its own process and does not quit with the window. Close the window and it keeps working from the menu bar. Quitting the app asks first.
Sharing this machine's compute
- Turn this computer into a node for your other devices.
- Pick the interface and the port yourself; the app remembers them, and it will never silently fall back to 0.0.0.0.
- Media a node receives is kept in its lan-host directory, and automatic cleanup is off by default.