Qwen TTS and Whisper Base make network calls to HuggingFace even when
model weights are fully cached locally, because from_pretrained()
defaults to local_files_only=False. This causes failures for offline
users.
Add a reusable force_offline_if_cached() context manager that sets
HF_HUB_OFFLINE=1 during model loading when is_model_cached() is True.
Applied to all four affected load paths:
- PyTorchTTSBackend (Qwen TTS)
- PyTorchSTTBackend (Whisper)
- MLXTTSBackend (refactored from inline implementation)
- MLXSTTBackend (previously unprotected)
Closes#82
Backend:
- Generation service reports 'loading_model' status only when model
is not yet in memory, then 'generating' once inference starts
- Migrate hf_offline_patch.py from print() to logging module
- Update ADDING_TTS_ENGINES.md for post-refactor file paths
Frontend:
- HistoryTable shows 'Loading model...' vs 'Generating...' based on step
- FloatingGenerateBox: replace instruct toggle + inline effects editor
with an effects preset dropdown (third dropdown after language and engine)
- Instruct UI removed for now (form field preserved for future models)
- Remove focus ring from Select component globally
Implements offline mode patch for API stability issues:
- Add hf_offline_patch.py to monkey-patch huggingface_hub
- Force cache-only lookups before mlx_audio imports
- Create symlink from original Qwen repo to MLX community version
when only MLX version is cached
This fixes:
- Issue #150: Internet required even with cached models
- Issue #151: API crashes when HF network fails
The patch ensures that if models are locally cached, no network
requests are made to HuggingFace during speech generation.
James Pine