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PodX - Offline Library with OpenWebUI export

Repo-friendly secrets

  • Secrets live in .env at the repo root (NOT committed).
  • Commit .env.example. Users copy it to .env and fill in their values.
  • We also include .gitignore to keep .env and data paths out of git.
  • .env.example now includes variables for Meilisearch and OpenWebUI, including OPENWEBUI_URL, OPENWEBUI_API_KEY, and OPENWEBUI_KB_ID.

Quick start

cp .env.example .env   # edit values (MEILI_MASTER_KEY, OPENWEBUI_API_KEY, etc.)
docker compose up -d --build
# UI:   http://<host>:8088
# Meili: http://<host>:7700

The worker reaches OpenWebUI at $OPENWEBUI_URL (default: http://host.docker.internal:3003 on macOS/Windows, or http://openwebui:3003 on Linux Docker networks).

Note: .env.example includes placeholders for both Meili and OpenWebUI configuration. Be sure to set OPENWEBUI_URL to point to your OpenWebUI container accordingly.

GPU (CUDA) Setup

To run Whisper on NVIDIA GPU:

  • Install the NVIDIA driver on the host and the NVIDIA Container Toolkit.
  • Copy .env.example to .env and set:
    • DOCKER_GPU_RUNTIME=nvidia
    • NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all (or a specific GPU index)
    • WHISPER_DEVICE=cuda (or auto)
    • WHISPER_PRECISION=float16 (recommended for GPU)
    • Optional: set a GPU base image for builds (amd64 typical):
      • GPU_BASE_IMAGE=nvidia/cuda:11.8.0-cudnn8-runtime-ubuntu22.04
  • Rebuild and start: docker compose up -d --build
  • Check logs for device='cuda' when the transcribe worker loads the model.

By default we build from python:3.11-slim. You can override the base image at build time via GPU_BASE_IMAGE to a CUDA runtime tag that exists for your architecture. If you don't specify it or you're on a non-GPU host, the containers run on CPU.

Components Overview

  • scanner: Scans your media folders (library and transcripts) for new or updated files, triggering ingestion and processing workflows.
  • worker: Handles general background tasks such as metadata fetching, thumbnail generation, and indexing.
  • rss_ingest: Periodically reads an RSS feed list, downloads new podcast episodes, and adds them to your library for processing.

Environment Variables

  • REFRESH_EXISTING (default false): If set to true, forces re-download of metadata, captions, and thumbnails for existing files during scanning.
  • REFRESH_TTL (default 604800 seconds, i.e., 7 days): Time-to-live before metadata and related info are refreshed.
  • REFRESH_FAILURE_TTL (default 86400 seconds, i.e., 1 day): Time-to-live before retrying failed refresh attempts.
  • LIBRARY_HOST_DIR: Path on the host machine where your source media files reside (mounted into the container).
  • TRANSCRIPTS_HOST_DIR: Path on the host machine where processed transcripts, subtitles, and metadata are stored.
  • WHISPER_MODEL: Whisper model variant to use for transcription (e.g., small, medium, large).
  • WHISPER_PRECISION: Precision setting for Whisper inference (float32 or float16).
  • WHISPER_LANGUAGE: Language code for Whisper to use during transcription (e.g., en for English).
  • WHISPER_DEVICE: Device selection for faster-whisper (cpu, cuda, or auto). Default is cpu in docker-compose to avoid GPU lib issues on non-GPU hosts.
  • WHISPER_CPU_THREADS: CPU threads used for Whisper when WHISPER_DEVICE=cpu (default 4).
  • TRANSCRIBE_BACKEND (default local): Set to openai to offload Whisper transcription to the OpenAI API instead of running locally.
  • OPENAI_API_KEY: Required when TRANSCRIBE_BACKEND=openai; API key used for authenticated requests.
  • OPENAI_BASE_URL, OPENAI_TRANSCRIBE_MODEL, OPENAI_TRANSCRIBE_TIMEOUT: Optional overrides for the OpenAI transcription endpoint, model and request timeout.
  • YTDLP_COOKIES: Path to YouTube-DL cookies file for accessing age-restricted or private videos.
  • OPENWEBUI_URL: Base URL of the OpenWebUI API (default depends on platform).
  • OPENWEBUI_API_KEY: API key for authenticating PodX workers with OpenWebUI.
  • OPENWEBUI_KB_NAME: Human-readable Knowledge Base name to attach documents to.
  • OPENWEBUI_KB_ID: Fixed UUID of the Knowledge Base (avoids duplicate KBs on restart).
  • OPENWEBUI_AUTO_FIX_METADATA (default 1): When enabled, PodX clears/overrides the Knowledge Base metadata template before uploads to prevent ingestion crashes from invalid templates.
  • OPENWEBUI_METADATA_TEMPLATE_JSON: Optional JSON applied when the auto-fix runs (defaults to {}, i.e., no custom metadata template).
  • MEDIA_NORMALIZE (default 1): Automatically transcode downloaded media into Plex-friendly formats (HEVC MP4 for video, MP3 for audio by default).
  • MEDIA_NORMALIZE_KEEP_ORIGINAL (default 0): Preserve the source file alongside the normalised copy (appends .orig*).
  • VIDEO_NORMALIZE_*: Fine-tune video conversion (VIDEO_NORMALIZE_CODEC, VIDEO_NORMALIZE_EXTENSION, VIDEO_NORMALIZE_CRF, VIDEO_NORMALIZE_PRESET, VIDEO_NORMALIZE_AUDIO_CODEC, VIDEO_NORMALIZE_AUDIO_BITRATE).
  • AUDIO_NORMALIZE_*: Control audio conversion (AUDIO_NORMALIZE_CODEC, AUDIO_NORMALIZE_EXTENSION, AUDIO_NORMALIZE_BITRATE, AUDIO_NORMALIZE_CHANNELS).
  • PODCASTS_ROOT (default /library): Target directory inside the container where RSS podcast audio is saved.
  • PODCASTS_PER_SHOW (default true): Organize episodes into per-show subfolders under PODCASTS_ROOT.

RSS Ingestion

PodX supports automated podcast ingestion via RSS feeds:

  • Add your podcast RSS feed URLs to a feeds.txt file, one URL per line.
  • The rss_ingest component reads this list periodically, downloads new episodes, and places them into PODCASTS_ROOT (default /library), optionally into per-show subfolders if PODCASTS_PER_SHOW=true.
  • Downloaded podcasts are then processed by the scanner and worker to generate transcripts, metadata, and thumbnails.

Refresh Mechanism

PodX periodically refreshes metadata, captions, and thumbnails for media files based on the TTL settings:

  • Files older than REFRESH_TTL are re-processed to keep metadata up-to-date.
  • Failed refresh attempts are retried after REFRESH_FAILURE_TTL.
  • Setting REFRESH_EXISTING=true in .env forces a refresh on every scan cycle.

Multi-Worker Setup

For improved performance and scalability, PodX supports running multiple workers with specialized roles:

  • podx-worker: Handles general tasks such as scanning, metadata fetching, and indexing.
  • podx-worker-transcribe: Dedicated to heavy Whisper transcription jobs, isolating resource-intensive audio processing.

This separation helps optimize resource usage and allows parallel processing of different workloads.

Plex Integration

  • The library folder contains your source media and can be mounted directly into Plex or other media managers.
  • PodX automatically generates NFO files and .srt subtitle sidecars per show and episode, enabling rich metadata and transcripts in Plex.
  • This setup lets you browse, search, and play your media with synchronized transcripts and metadata seamlessly.

Ingest helpers

MEILI_URL=http://localhost:7700 MEILI_KEY=$MEILI_MASTER_KEY ./ingest/ingest_pdfs.sh /path/*.pdf
MEILI_URL=http://localhost:7700 MEILI_KEY=$MEILI_MASTER_KEY ./ingest/ingest_epub.py /path/*.epub
MEILI_URL=http://localhost:7700 MEILI_KEY=$MEILI_MASTER_KEY ./ingest/ingest_kiwix.sh /path/wiki.zim

Backfill existing files into OpenWebUI

# From repo root:
./tools/backfill_openwebui.sh
# Or include extra folders to scan:
./tools/backfill_openwebui.sh /some/other/folder /another/folder
  • Reads .env for OPENWEBUI_URL, OPENWEBUI_API_KEY, OPENWEBUI_KB_NAME.
  • Uploads *.txt, *.md, *.html it finds in ./transcripts and ./library/web by default.

Difference between library and transcripts folders

The library folder contains the downloaded source media such as videos, podcasts, web snapshots, and other original files. This folder is the one you can mount to Plex or other media managers to access and play your media content.

The transcripts folder, on the other hand, contains processed text data including transcripts, subtitles, and JSON metadata. This folder is mainly used for search and ingestion into OpenWebUI and usually does not need to be mounted in Plex or other media players.

Generating required secrets

1. Meilisearch master key

Meilisearch needs a strong master key (like a root password). Generate one locally:

# On Linux or Mac with OpenSSL installed
openssl rand -hex 32

# Example output (keep it secret, do not reuse this exact value):
92e4d0d2e4c6f489a91dfc30b6fd6c985f6780ad827f1e7ce1bb3c6dc81d562b

Then put it in your .env:

MEILI_MASTER_KEY=92e4d0d2e4c6f489a91dfc30b6fd6c985f6780ad827f1e7ce1bb3c6dc81d562b
MEILI_KEY=${MEILI_MASTER_KEY}

2. OpenWebUI API key

To allow PodX to push documents into your OpenWebUI Knowledge Base, create an API key:

  1. Go to your running OpenWebUI (e.g. http://localhost:3003).
  2. Log in with your admin account.
  3. Navigate to Settings → API Keys.
  4. Click Generate new API key, give it a name like podx-worker.
  5. Copy the generated key and add it to .env:
OPENWEBUI_API_KEY=sk-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

If the key is ever leaked, revoke it in OpenWebUI and generate a new one.

3. Knowledge Base ID

To avoid creating duplicate Knowledge Bases on every PodX restart, use a fixed Knowledge Base ID:

  • Run the command below to list your OpenWebUI Knowledge Bases and their IDs:
./scripts/podx-tools.sh owui-kbs
  • Copy the UUID of the desired Knowledge Base and set it in your .env:
OPENWEBUI_KB_ID=your-knowledge-base-uuid-here

This ensures PodX attaches documents consistently to the same Knowledge Base.

Using podx-tools

PodX includes a helper script ./scripts/podx-tools.sh for interacting with OpenWebUI.

Common commands

  • Check OpenWebUI connectivity

    ./scripts/podx-tools.sh owui-health

    Verifies that OpenWebUI is reachable at $OPENWEBUI_URL.

  • List Knowledge Bases

    ./scripts/podx-tools.sh owui-kbs

    Lists available Knowledge Bases with their UUIDs.

  • Resolve Knowledge Base ID by name

    ./scripts/podx-tools.sh owui-kb-resolve "Homelab Library"

    Resolves the fixed UUID for a KB by its human-readable name.

  • Debug KB info

    ./scripts/podx-tools.sh owui-kb-debug "Homelab Library"

  • Attach a file

    ./scripts/podx-tools.sh owui-attach "Homelab Library" /path/to/file.txt

    Uploads a transcript or document to a KB. Supports .txt, .md, .json, and .html.

  • List files in a KB

    ./scripts/podx-tools.sh owui-kb-files "Homelab Library"

Notes

  • OPENWEBUI_URL, OPENWEBUI_API_KEY, and OPENWEBUI_KB_ID must be set in your .env.
  • JSON files are optional. Only attach them if you want their contents searchable.
  • Duplicate or empty content may be rejected by OpenWebUI with a 400 error.

Troubleshooting

Common errors and fixes

  • 400: The content provided is empty
    This usually means the transcript file was empty, binary, or mis-encoded. Verify that the .txt files really contain text and are not corrupted.

  • Duplicate Knowledge Base creation
    Fix this by setting OPENWEBUI_KB_ID in your .env after running ./scripts/podx-tools.sh owui-kbs to get the fixed KB ID.

  • Worker cannot connect to OpenWebUI (curl: Failed to connect to localhost:3003)
    Ensure OPENWEBUI_URL is correctly set to http://host.docker.internal:3003 on macOS/Windows or http://openwebui:3003 on Linux Docker networks.

  • Attaching files silently fails or shows pending forever
    Check podx-worker logs for errors, make sure the podx-worker-transcribe is running for audio transcription tasks, and verify that OPENWEBUI_API_KEY is valid.

  • Multiple Knowledge Bases with the same name
    Resolve this explicitly using the owui-kb-resolve command to get the fixed Knowledge Base ID.

Worker separation

PodX runs two types of workers for better resource management:

  • podx-worker: Handles general tasks such as scanning, metadata fetching, and indexing.
  • podx-worker-transcribe: Dedicated to Whisper transcription jobs, isolating resource-intensive audio processing to optimize performance.