Local Servers — Piper, Whisper, Studio, crawl
Settings → Local Servers is in the Assistants group. The tab subtitle is exactly “Piper, Whisper, HyperFrames, Skill Seekers, and web crawl.” Voice devices, Piper voice/speed/volume, and the Whisper model stay on Settings → Voice. MCP connections (Google, GitHub, Discord, Telegram, Linear, custom stdio) live on Settings → Extensions — not here.
Five cards, as they appear
The tab is a vertical stack: Piper TTS, Whisper STT, HyperFrames, Skill Seekers, Web crawler. Toggles persist immediately. Status pills poll every few seconds (ready / connecting / error / disabled).
4123, 8935, 4567, 8765, 11235, or 51452 to the internet.
Launch no longer auto-starts sidecars
VibeFuse no longer starts Whisper, Crawl4AI, HyperFrames Studio, or Skill Seekers on every boot. Auto-starting them saturated the machine and made the canvas wait for a free core. Each engine starts on first use or when you press the card button.
| Engine | How it starts |
|---|---|
| Piper | Per speak request — piper.exe is not a daemon. No Start button. |
| Whisper | One-shot whisper-cli on the next listen, if Use local Whisper is on. |
| HyperFrames | Start Studio, Open widget, or the first Jarvis HyperFrames tool. |
| Skill Seekers | Connect on the card (or the first Jarvis lookup that needs it). |
| Crawl4AI + SearXNG | Start web tools, or the first web_search / scrape call. |
Piper TTS
Card description: “Local text-to-speech server for Jarvis replies. Voice, speed, and volume are in Settings → Voice.” Voice / speed / volume are not on this tab.
Controls on this card
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Use local Piper | On: spawn piper.exe per request (and the local :4123 API if the exe is missing). Off: never spawn local Piper; speech uses the remote Piper endpoint. |
| Piper endpoint | OpenAI-compatible /v1/audio/speech URL. Placeholder http://127.0.0.1:4123. |
| Test Piper | Probes STT + TTS and prints Speech ready/down · Piper ready/down. |
Local Piper is a per-request piper.exe spawn — not a long-running daemon, and there is no Start / Restart / Stop.
Full voice list, ack clips, and fallbacks: Piper TTS.
Whisper STT
Card description: “Local speech-to-text server. The Whisper model is in Settings → Voice.”
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Use local Whisper | On: run local whisper-cli. Off: never run the CLI; transcription uses the remote Whisper endpoint. |
| Whisper endpoint | Fallback transcribe API when local CLI is down. Placeholder http://127.0.0.1:8935. |
Local STT is a one-shot whisper-cli process per take — not a Whisper daemon. Pick the ggml model on Settings → Voice. Engine, ffmpeg, and models: Whisper STT.
HyperFrames
Card description: “Local HyperFrames Studio for HTML-to-video compositions.” Needs Node.js 20+ on PATH.
- Enable HyperFrames Studio — Off: Studio is stopped and HyperFrames AI tools are hidden. Rendered videos already on the canvas keep playing.
- Workspace
C:\vibefuse\hyperframes· Studio port 4567 (http://127.0.0.1:4567).
Chips
Studio UI · Init · Catalog · Preview · Check · Render · Capture · Media
Buttons
Start Studio when it is down; Restart / Stop when it is ready; Open widget always available (places Studio on the canvas).
Jarvis can init, compose, check, preview, and render through this server. Walkthrough: HyperFrames Studio.
Skill Seekers
Card description: “Find existing docs-to-skill presets and package new skills locally.” There is no on/off toggle — only Connect / Disconnect.
- Local Python MCP from yusufkaraaslan/Skill_Seekers
- Path
C:\vibefuse\Skill_Seekers - Requires Python 3.11+ (3.12 preferred) and Git. No API key.
- HTTP port 8765 on localhost
- First Connect clones the repo and builds a venv; later Connects reuse it
Chips
Find skills · Docs → skill · GitHub
Jarvis uses these tools to search presets (React, Godot, Blender, Claude Code, Unity, and more) before calling create_skill.
Launch does not auto-start Skill Seekers — press Connect, or let the first lookup start it.
How to write a skill after you find one: Write a skill.
PYTHONUTF8=1 so Windows cp1252 logs do not crash the MCP.Web crawler
Card description: “SearXNG for AI search. Crawl4AI (open-source Python) for scrape, map, and crawl — no Firecrawl Cloud, no Docker required.”
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Enable SearXNG search | Off: SearXNG stops and web_search / firecrawl_search are hidden. |
| Enable Crawl4AI scraper | Off: the Python sidecar stops and firecrawl_scrape / firecrawl_map are hidden. |
| Card title | Crawl4AI + SearXNG |
| SearXNG endpoint | Default http://127.0.0.1:51452 |
| Crawl4AI endpoint | Default http://127.0.0.1:11235 |
| Start web tools / Refresh | Starts the sidecar; Refresh when it is already ready. |
Chips
Search · Scrape · Map · Crawl
- No Firecrawl Cloud and no Docker. Crawl4AI is a local Python process on port 11235.
- The Firecrawl MCP server is forced disabled — you cannot turn that MCP card on. Search and scrape are built-in tools, not an MCP package.
- Jarvis tools:
web_search,firecrawl_search,firecrawl_scrape,firecrawl_map. - If the sidecar is down, scrape still uses a built-in fetch fallback. Search needs SearXNG running.
Connect other MCP servers (Google, GitHub, Discord, Telegram, Linear) from Settings → Extensions.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Fix |
|---|---|
| Speech / Piper chips say Down after launch | Expected until first use. Hold the orb or click Test Piper. Confirm Use local Piper / Use local Whisper are on. |
| Test Piper fails | Re-run the installer so %LOCALAPPDATA%\VibeFuse\bin\piper.exe and jarvis.onnx exist. Voice/speed/volume are on Settings → Voice, not this tab. |
| Whisper never starts | First listen starts whisper-cli. Need ffmpeg on PATH and a model in Settings → Voice. See Whisper STT. |
| HyperFrames Studio will not start | Install Node.js 20+. Enable HyperFrames Studio, then Start Studio. Workspace must stay C:\vibefuse\hyperframes. |
| Skill Seekers failed to start | Install Python 3.11+ and Git. Press Connect again so the venv rebuilds. Confirm C:\vibefuse\Skill_Seekers exists. There is no enable toggle — only Connect / Disconnect. |
| Crawl4AI not ready | Enable Crawl4AI scraper, click Start web tools. Search can still work via SearXNG on 127.0.0.1:51452. Scrape falls back to built-in fetch. |
| Cannot enable Firecrawl MCP | By design. The Firecrawl MCP preset is forced off. Use the built-in web_search / firecrawl_* tools. |
| Engines start then the canvas stutters | That is why launch no longer auto-starts Whisper, Crawl4AI, HyperFrames, or Skill Seekers. Start only the card you need. |
| Port already in use | Another process is bound to 4123 / 8935 / 4567 / 8765 / 11235 / 51452. Stop the extra copy, then Refresh or Start again. |