nexus-dnn

Local-first AI orchestration with a host-authoritative Rust runtime, extension-driven capabilities, and first-party support for local LLM, audio, and video workflows.

📋 Table of Contents

• 🚀 Run It Locally First
• 🧩 Supported Capabilities
  • 🎬 Video Generation — SVI2-Pro · LongCat · LTX-2.3, RIFE frame-gen, RTX ×2/×4 upscale
  • 🧠 LLM Inference — llama.cpp + speculative decoding (MTP)
  • 🎤 Voice Generation (EmotionTTS) — IndexTTS-2 emotion vectors + storyboard
  • 🧊 Image-to-3D — Microsoft TRELLIS.2, single image → watertight GLB mesh
  • 🧑 Photo-to-Identity-Head — Arc2Avatar, single photo → identity 3D head, graft onto a TRELLIS body
  • 🎨 Image Generation — Stable Diffusion · FLUX (coming soon)
• ✨ What nexus-dnn Is For
• 🧭 System At A Glance
• 🖼️ UI Screenshots
• 🔌 Built-in Extensions
• 📚 Documentation Map
• 🛣️ Future Roadmap
• 📄 License

🚀 Run It Locally First

1. Install prerequisites

What	Minimum
Rust	stable
Node.js	20+
pnpm	8+
uv	latest recommended

uv matters because several built-in extensions use host-managed Python environments.

GPU / production install? See docs/deployment/container-and-cuda-dependencies.md → "Installation by platform". On linux-aarch64 (DGX Spark) run the container (just dgx-deploy); on Windows use the native build script dockerfiles/win64.build.ps1 (no Windows container — CUDA is Linux-container-only).

2. Clone and start

git clone <your-fork-or-origin-url> nexus-dnn
cd nexus-dnn

# Host only: browser UI served from the embedded frontend bundle
cargo host

# or

cargo run -p nexus-core --bin nexus-dnn

Open http://127.0.0.1:3000.

3. Verify the host is healthy

curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/api/v1/health

Expected shape:

{
  "data": {
    "status": "ok",
    "details": {
      "...": "additional live health fields may appear here"
    }
  },
  "meta": {
    "timestamp": "2026-06-12T00:00:00Z"
  },
  "error": null
}

nexus-dnn currently listens on 0.0.0.0:$NEXUS_PORT, but local usage should still prefer 127.0.0.1.

4. Useful local launch modes

Goal	Command
Host only	cargo host
Host + TUI	cargo dev
TUI drives host	cargo dev-tui
Desktop shell	cd apps/web && pnpm install && pnpm tauri dev
Rebuild embedded web app	cd apps/web && pnpm install && pnpm build

The host serves the already-built web bundle from apps/web/dist, so frontend install/build is mainly for frontend or desktop-shell development.

✨ What nexus-dnn Is For

nexus-dnn is a local-first platform for running AI features as structured host-managed systems instead of ad-hoc scripts. The host owns process lifecycle, storage, installs, API routing, workflows, model/runtime leasing, and extension boundaries. Extensions add domain capability without taking control away from the host.

Today that means the repo can host:

• Local chat and RAG workflows
• Host-managed backend runtime leasing
• Emotional TTS pipelines
• Image-to-video and long-video generation flows
• Image-to-3D mesh generation (single image → watertight GLB)
• Single-photo identity 3D heads (Arc2Avatar), optionally grafted onto a generated body
• Extension-owned UI surfaces mounted inside the host app

🧩 Supported Capabilities

Everything below runs locally, on a single consumer GPU, behind the same host-managed runtime-lease + model-store foundation.

Capability	Engines	Highlights	Status
🎬 Video Generation	SVI2-Pro · LongCat · LTX-2.3	Text→Video, Image→Video, infinite length, RIFE frame-gen, RTX ×2/×4 upscale	🟢 Stable
🧠 LLM Inference	llama.cpp	Speculative decoding via MTP, GGUF, host-managed runtime leases	🟢 Stable
🎤 Voice Generation	IndexTTS-2 (EmotionTTS)	8-axis emotion vectors, storyboard, custom-voice upload	🟢 Stable
🧊 Image-to-3D	Microsoft TRELLIS.2	Single image → watertight GLB, mesh-only or textured, triangle-budget decimation, in-browser 3D preview	🟢 Stable
🧑 Photo-to-Identity-Head	Arc2Avatar (FLAME + ArcFace)	Single photo → identity-faithful 3D head, graft onto a TRELLIS base mesh, GLB	🟡 Experimental
🎨 Image Generation	Stable Diffusion · FLUX	Text→Image	🟠 Coming soon

---

🎬 Video Generation

nexus.video.svi2-pro · nexus.video.longcat · nexus.video.ltx23

Generate video from a text prompt or a still image — then push it past what a single diffusion pass yields: higher frame-rate and higher resolution, all on a local GPU.

Engines

• SVI2-Pro — Stable Video Infinity 2.0 Pro (two SVI LoRAs over the Wan2.2-I2V-A14B dual-expert MoE). Does both Image→Video and Text→Video, with infinite, cross-clip-consistent length: clips are chained with rolling cross-fade + reference anchoring so the subject stays coherent across arbitrarily many segments. The fp8 e4m3fn base fits in 16 GB of VRAM — or less.
• LTX-2.3 — fast image-to-video with host-managed runtime profiles. RTX 40 FP8, RTX 50 Blackwell FP8 (production) + RTX 50 NVFP4 (experimental). 16 GB-safe by default via external-segment rendering.
• LongCat — 13.6B DiT (UMT5-XXL text encoder, Wan 2.1 VAE) for text→video, image→video, and long-video continuations. FP8 e4m3fn path for 12–16 GB; BF16 path for 24 GB+.

Post-processing stack — applies on top of any engine

• 🌀 RIFE frame interpolation (frame-gen) — torch-RIFE (vendored IFNet HDv3) synthesizes in-between frames to multiply FPS (e.g. 16 → 48 fps) for fluid motion, with no extra diffusion cost.
• 🔍 RTX ×2 / ×4 upscaling — NVIDIA Maxine RTX super-resolution on RTX GPUs upscales the output in a hardware-accelerated pass (e.g. 1216×768 → 2432×1536).
• ⚙️ Attention backends (SDPA / FlashAttention-2/3 / SageAttention) are auto-selected per GPU architecture + dtype.

16 GB-friendly by design — staged CPU offload, fp8 compute, and external-segment rendering keep peak VRAM under consumer-card budgets.

---

🧠 LLM Inference

nexus.local-llm

Local large-language-model inference and chat, served through host-managed backend runtimes.

• ⚡ Latest llama.cpp backend with speculative decoding via MTP (Multi-Token Prediction) — a draft head proposes several tokens per step and the main model verifies them in one pass, for materially higher tokens/sec at identical output quality.
• 📦 GGUF models with quantization-aware install and an on-disk model store.
• 🛡️ Host-managed runtime leases — the host owns process lifecycle, VRAM budgeting, and idle reaping; the extension simply acquires a lease.
• 💬 Interactive chat threads with per-thread generation settings, model picker, and RAG workflows.
• 🎚️ Throughput knobs: KV-cache reuse, MoE offload, min-p / DRY sampling, context cram.

---

🎤 Voice Generation (EmotionTTS)

nexus.audio.emotiontts

State-of-the-art emotional text-to-speech via IndexTTS-2, running in a host-managed Python subprocess.

• 🎚️ 8-axis emotion vectors — dial the emotional tone (joy, anger, sadness, surprise, …) per line. Optional Qwen text-emotion inference reads the intended emotion straight from the text, and audio-reference transfer copies the feeling from a sample clip.
• 🎬 Storyboard — author a multi-line script/dialogue, assign a voice and an emotion vector to every line, and batch-synthesize the whole scene in a single run. The lines render as one coherent, ordered sequence with independent per-line control — think a screenplay that compiles to audio, with each character speaking in their own voice and mood.
• 🎙️ Custom voice upload — drop in your own reference audio to mint a custom voice ("voice asset"). Automatic reference-audio preprocessing, alignment-score observability, and speaker-prefix caching keep quality high and re-synthesis fast.
• 🗂️ Deployment-scoped character→voice mappings, a global content-hash synthesis cache (10 GB LRU), and partial-ZIP install with auto-resume.

---

🧊 Image-to-3D

nexus.3d.trellis2 · operator trellis2.generate_3d

Turn a single image into a watertight 3D mesh with Microsoft TRELLIS.2 (a 4B flow-matching model over an O-Voxel sparse structure), then orbit and download the result as a GLB — all on a local GPU.

• 🧊 Single image → watertight GLB — upload a subject on a clean background; the pipeline runs image → sparse structure → shape → mesh decode → GLB export and returns a downloadable artifact.
• 🎚️ Tunable flow — sparse-structure and shape flow steps, deterministic seed, and a triangle-budget decimation target for light, game-ready meshes.
• 🎨 Mesh-only or textured — skip the texture pass for a fast MeshOnly GLB, or bake a full PBR texture for a shaded result.
• 🧭 In-browser 3D preview — every result renders in an interactive <model-viewer> (orbit, auto-rotate, neutral/ACES tone-mapping, exposure) with a live FORMAT / TRIANGLES / VERTICES readout and one-click GLB download.
• 🛡️ Host-managed — install, runtime lease, storage, and /media artifact serving all flow through the same host foundation as the video and LLM stacks.

Validated end-to-end on the DGX Spark (GB10, aarch64 Blackwell sm_121) with vendored native kernels. See extensions/builtin/trellis2/README.md, or open the standalone showcase: docs/showcase/trellis2-image-to-3d.html.

---

🧑 Photo-to-Identity-Head

nexus.3d.faceavatar · operators faceavatar.generate_head · faceavatar.graft_head

Turn a single photo of a real person into an identity-faithful 3D head with Arc2Avatar — a FLAME-topology Gaussian avatar optimized toward the person's ArcFace recognition embedding — exported as a GLB for the same in-browser 3D viewer.

• 🧑 Photo → identity head — insightface ArcFace embedding → Arc2Face SDS optimization → Gaussian splat → FLAME-template mesh + color bake → GLB.
• 🧬 Head refinement (graft) — feed a TRELLIS body/character GLB as an opaque base mesh and refine its head with the person's identity: the body and hair come from TRELLIS, the face carries the likeness. Two deploy-time recipes — standalone head, or head-refine.
• 🎚️ Identity-fit iterations knob (quality vs latency) — the fit is optimization-based (minutes per photo).
• 🛡️ Host-managed — install, runtime lease, storage, and /media serving through the same foundation as the 3D, video, and LLM stacks; results render in the in-app <model-viewer>.

Non-commercial + honest ceiling: Arc2Avatar builds on FLAME (Max Planck), which is research/non-commercial only. Single-photo output is a recognizable frontal-to-three-quarter head on a FLAME-shaped base — not scan-grade 360° (unseen sides/hair are approximated). Validated end-to-end on the DGX Spark (GB10, aarch64 Blackwell sm_121).

---

🎨 Image Generation

🟠 Coming soon

Text-to-image generation via Stable Diffusion and FLUX, packaged as host-managed extensions on the same runtime-lease + model-store foundation as the video and LLM stacks — so installs, VRAM budgeting, and UI mounting work exactly the same way.

🧭 System At A Glance

flowchart LR
    UI["🖥️ Web UI / Tauri / TUI"] --> HOST["🛡️ nexus-dnn host"]
    HOST --> API["HTTP + SSE + WS"]
    HOST --> REG["Extension registry"]
    HOST --> DEPS["Dependency installer"]
    HOST --> STORE["SQLite + artifact store"]
    HOST --> RUNTIMES["Backend runtime leases"]
    REG --> EXT["Built-in + external extensions"]
    EXT --> WORKERS["Native / Python workers"]
    WORKERS --> RUNTIMES
    WORKERS --> STORE

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Host authority is the core design rule

Area	Authority
HTTP listener, health, API envelopes	Host
Extension discovery, validation, enable/disable	Host
Dependency install plans	Host
Runtime processes and leases	Host
Workflow storage, runs, artifacts	Host
Extension-specific logic and UX	Extension, but only through host-owned surfaces

🖼️ UI Screenshots

Image-to-3D — TRELLIS 2 generative surface
Extensions gallery	Models browser
Deployments	Backend runtimes
Dependency installer	Modules
SVI2 recipe	SVI2 recipe graph

🔌 Built-in Extensions

Extension	Status	What it adds
nexus.local-llm	🟢 active product surface	Local chat, RAG, backend-runtime integration, model/browser layouts
nexus.audio.emotiontts	🟢 active product surface	Emotional dialogue TTS, voice assets, batch runs, audio editing
nexus.video.ltx23	🟢 active product surface	LTX 2.3 image-to-video with host-managed runtime profiles
nexus.video.longcat	🟡 active extension, still evolving	LongCat-based long-video generation paths
nexus.video.svi2-pro	🟡 advanced / high-requirement path	SVI 2.0 Pro image-to-video for Blackwell-focused setups
nexus.3d.trellis2	🟢 active product surface	Image→3D mesh generation (Microsoft TRELLIS.2), GLB export, in-app 3D viewer
nexus.3d.faceavatar	🟡 experimental	Single photo → identity 3D head (Arc2Avatar), head-graft onto a TRELLIS base, GLB export

Several of these extensions ship more than operators:

• Dependency graphs
• Backend runtime manifests
• Storage migrations
• YAML layouts
• Static web assets and custom elements
• Extension routers mounted under /api/v1/extensions/{ext_id}/...

🔄 How The Host And Extensions Communicate

sequenceDiagram
    participant User as User Surface
    participant Host as Host App
    participant Ext as Extension Registry/Router
    participant Worker as Native or Python Worker
    participant Runtime as Backend Runtime Lease
    participant Store as Storage + Artifacts

    User->>Host: UI action / API request
    Host->>Ext: Resolve extension metadata or route
    Ext->>Host: Manifest, layouts, storage, router, runtime declarations
    Host->>Worker: JSON-RPC / typed host service calls
    Worker->>Runtime: Acquire or use host-managed lease
    Worker->>Store: Read/write artifacts through host-owned paths
    Worker-->>Host: Results, progress, errors
    Host-->>User: REST/SSE/WS updates + rendered UI

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The important boundary is that extensions do not become mini-hosts. They can contribute routes, UIs, and workers, but the host still owns mounting, serving, validation, and lifecycle.

🧪 Tested Machine Snapshot

The strongest recent validation evidence in the repo is centered on a Windows workstation rather than a broad cross-platform certification matrix.

Area	Evidence in repo
OS	Windows
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
VRAM	~15.9 GiB
Driver family	570.65+
Python evidence	3.12.11
Torch evidence	2.12.0 + CUDA 13.2

Architectures: the host targets amd64 Windows, amd64 Linux, and aarch64 Linux (e.g. DGX Spark / GB10). The host, embedded Python, ffmpeg, and the LLM install pipeline are arch-aware across all three; on aarch64, managed llama.cpp is CPU-only (GPU via external llama-server) and GPU video paths are experimental. See the Architecture Support matrix.

For the detailed support notes and caveats, read docs/platform-support.md and docs/requirements.md.

📚 Documentation Map

Start here:

• docs/getting-started.md — install, run, verify, and choose the right local launch mode
• docs/platform-support.md — what is validated today, what is experimental, and hardware expectations
• docs/architecture.md — host authority, crate map, runtime model, and data flow
• docs/extension-internals.md — how extensions are discovered, mounted, and constrained
• docs/configuration.md — CLI flags, env vars, config file, and data directories

Reference and deeper dives:

• docs/api-reference.md
• docs/extension-guide.md
• docs/data-model.md
• docs/database-schema.md
• docs/README.md

🛣️ Future Roadmap

The next platform-level milestones should reinforce host authority instead of weakening it.

1. MCP control The host should expose and govern tool/runtime control surfaces in a first-class way, instead of scattering capability across ad-hoc extension UX.
2. Remote workers Worker execution should be able to move off-box while still preserving host-owned leases, auditability, and policy checks.
3. Extensions SDK Extension authoring should become a clearer supported product surface, with stable contracts, better scaffolding, and thinner accidental complexity.

See docs/roadmap.md for the expanded roadmap.

🧱 Repo Shape

apps/web/                  React web frontend + desktop shell frontend
crates/                    Rust workspace crates
extensions/builtin/        First-party extensions
docs/                      User and architecture documentation
specs/                     Detailed feature specs and verification artifacts
graphify-out/              Generated codebase graph and reports

🔍 Verification Commands

cargo test
cargo clippy
cd apps/web && pnpm test

📄 License

GPL-3.0. See LICENSE.