Addresses 16 robustness, transparency, and performance issues across
the Celery media processing pipeline:
Critical:
- Singleton DB engine in vision tasks (was leaking one per task call)
- acks_late + task_reject_on_worker_lost so crashed workers don't lose tasks
- Global soft/hard time limits (5/10 min) to prevent hung worker slots
- Thumbnail copy-before-resize (in-place mutation degraded larger sizes)
- backfill_vision now checks each task type independently (OCR, faces, etc.)
- Parameterized LIMIT in backfill_vision (was f-string SQL injection)
High:
- try/except + retry(max=3) on all vision inference tasks
- extract_metadata writes processing_error on exiftool failure
- PIL Image handles closed in _load_thumb/_load_original
- Scan progress Redis keys auto-expire after 1 hour
- Watcher lock renewal is wall-clock based (30s) not event-count based
- worker_process_init signal warms up vision models on startup
Medium:
- Explicit task_routes for every task name (wildcards never matched)
- app.services.metadata added to Celery include list
- POST /maintenance/recover-stuck endpoint for photos stuck in processing
- Docker healthchecks for worker-light, worker-vision, and Redis
- Task ID in vision log lines for distributed tracing
- Bare except:pass narrowed to specific exceptions
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Every user — including the initial admin — now gets their own
subdirectory under PHOTO_DIRS (e.g. /photos/admin, /photos/bob).
No one's source root points to the mount root itself, eliminating
cross-user photo overlap entirely.
- Setup endpoint: admin gets /photos/{username} like everyone else
- Migration: default admin media_path set to /photos/admin
- Remove scan directory pruning (no longer needed)
- Fix thumbnail retry URL: use & separator when token query param
already present (was producing ?token=...?retry=N)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
When the admin's source root is the mount root (/photos) and other
users have subdirectories (/photos/bob), the admin's scan now prunes
those directories from os.walk so photos aren't double-indexed under
the wrong user. The scanner queries all active source roots owned by
other users and excludes their paths during directory traversal.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Re-enable the watchfiles-based folder watcher with a Redis lock to
prevent multiple instances from stacking up across restarts. The
watcher is now automatically dispatched on startup when scanner.watch
is true (default), and only one instance runs at a time.
- Redis lock (SETNX + TTL renewal) ensures single-instance execution
- Graceful exit if another watcher holds the lock
- New POST /maintenance/start-watcher endpoint for manual control
- Fix: use settings.scanner/vision properties instead of mulita_config
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Replace O(N²) pHash-only duplicate detection with a hybrid approach:
- pHash Hamming distance for exact/near-exact copies
- CLIP embedding cosine similarity via pgvector HNSW for visually
similar photos (crops, format changes, screenshots)
Post-scan now uses incremental mode: only newly added photos are
compared against the full library — O(new × log N) via HNSW index
instead of O(N²). Full regroup remains available from Settings.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Introduce username/password authentication with admin and user roles.
Each user gets their own media directory under /photos/{username}/ with
isolated photos, folders, heaps, and tags. Admins manage users and
observe the full library from a dedicated Settings page.
Backend:
- User model with bcrypt passwords and JWT access/refresh tokens
- Auth router (login, refresh, setup, change-password, status)
- Admin router (user CRUD with last-admin protection)
- user_id FK added to photos, folders, source_roots, heaps, tags
- All data routers scoped by authenticated user
- Scanner inherits user_id from source root owner
- Thumbnails stored under user-prefixed paths for isolation
- Library endpoints accept ?scope=global for admin cross-user view
- Alembic migration 0009 with data migration for existing installs
- Defensive bootstrap.py handles fresh vs existing DB startup
Frontend:
- AuthContext with token lifecycle, auto-refresh, login/logout
- Login page, first-run setup page, auth gate in App.tsx
- Bearer token interceptor on all API requests
- User identity + logout in left sidebar
- Admin-only Settings page with Library Management and Users tabs
- UserManagement panel (add, edit role, reset password, deactivate)
- Settings shows global stats across all users for admin
- Filter bar, right sidebar, keyboard hints hidden on settings page
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Scan now automatically queues backfill_vision (+90s) and recluster_faces
(+300s) after dispatching folder scans. Face extraction also schedules a
debounced recluster via Redis so incremental file-watcher imports get
clustered without manual intervention.
The ScanProgress widget now tracks worker queue activity beyond the scan
phase, showing a "Processing Photos" indicator with vision queue counts
while background tasks (embeddings, faces, tags, OCR) are running.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Lets operators fix corrupted capture dates at scale. Adds an editable
Date Taken field with a folder/filename-derived suggestion hint, a bulk
Date Taken section in the multi-select sidebar that either applies one
date to the whole selection or infers a per-photo date from each path,
a warning badge on thumbnails whose stored date disagrees with the
path, and a "Date issues" filter pill so suspicious photos can be
surfaced and fixed as a group. Edits are written back to EXIF on disk
so rescans don't clobber the fix.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Adds a per-folder "hide from views" toggle so noisy subtrees
(screenshots, WhatsApp dumps, work archives) can be excluded from
cross-cutting views without losing indexing. Photos under a hidden
folder are still scanned, thumbnailed, embedded, OCR'd, face-
extracted — they just stop appearing in All Photos, Rated, Colors,
Map, Tags, People, Search, Duplicates, and the sidebar counts.
Navigating directly into the folder still shows every photo.
Schema (migration 0007_folder_hidden):
- folders.is_hidden user-set toggle, default false
- photos.is_hidden denormalized effective flag (true iff any
ancestor folder is hidden), indexed so cross-
cutting queries stay on the existing planner
paths
The denorm is maintained by two paths:
- The scanner walks the ancestry chain on insert, with a per-scan
memoized cache so each folder is resolved once per scan.
- POST /api/v1/folders/{id}/hide flips folders.is_hidden and runs a
WITH RECURSIVE CTE to recompute every folder's effective state in
one query, then bulk-updates photos WHERE IS DISTINCT FROM. Runs
in ~10 ms on a 13k-photo library.
Filters added (cross-cutting queries):
- /library/stats — every sidebar badge via a shared `visible` filter
- /photos (list) — only when neither folder_id nor heap_id is set;
folder browse and heap browse always show everything
- /photos/map
- /library/duplicates/groups
- /folders/tree photo_count subquery
- /tags count_subq (drives Tags + People sidebar counts)
- services/duplicates.regroup_duplicates (so hidden dupes never
contaminate the Duplicates view)
- services/search.hybrid_search — both semantic (pgvector) and FTS
legs join photos so rankings don't include hidden results
Intentionally NOT filtered:
- /photos?folder_id=X and /photos?heap_id=X (user-intentional browse)
- /library/maintenance/pipeline-stats (tracks real worker state)
- cleanup service (disk-level ops, not views)
Frontend:
- sourceFolders.setHidden(id, hidden) API client method
- FolderTreeNode.is_hidden carried through the tree into TreeItem
- LeftSidebar kebab menu: "Hide from views" / "Show in views" with a
mutation that invalidates folders, photos, stats, and tags caches
- Hidden folder rows swap the Folder icon for EyeOff and render the
label italic/muted so the state is visible at a glance
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three overlapping fixes so the ingestion pipeline actually runs and the
user can see what it's doing:
Pipeline recovery
- app/database.py: use NullPool when MULITA_CELERY_WORKER=1 so each
Celery task opens a fresh asyncpg connection on its own event loop.
Fixes "another operation in progress" and "Future attached to a
different loop" errors that were dropping ~every thumbnail +
extract_metadata task on the floor.
- app/tasks/thumbs.py: initialize photo=None before the try and rollback
on error so a transport failure in the initial SELECT doesn't raise
UnboundLocalError in the except block and leak rows stuck in 'pending'.
- app/services/vision/bootstrap_models.py: on missing model files,
invoke export_models automatically instead of just warning. First
boot of a fresh install now self-heals.
- app/services/vision/export_models.py: shutil.move instead of
Path.rename so the YOLO export survives the /app → /data/models
cross-volume hop.
- requirements.txt: add ultralytics so export works in a stock image.
Worker topology
- docker-compose.yml: replace the single worker with worker-light
(default/high/low queues, c=2, IO-bound) and worker-vision (vision
queue, c=5, OMP_NUM_THREADS=1 to avoid oversubscription on 6 cores).
Vision is pinned to ≤5 parallel inferences so ONNX doesn't each
spawn an all-cores intra-op pool.
- .env / .env.example: CELERYD_CONCURRENCY replaced with
CELERY_LIGHT_CONCURRENCY + CELERY_VISION_CONCURRENCY.
- Backfill queries in thumbs / scan / vision now ORDER BY taken_at
DESC NULLS LAST so newest photos finish first — the library fills
in top-down in the UI instead of arbitrary insertion order.
Settings visibility
- routers/library.py: new GET /maintenance/pipeline-stats returning
done/total per stage (thumbnails, exif, gps, phash, embeddings,
tags, ocr, faces, face clusters, duplicate groups). Worker-status
now also reports the `vision` queue depth, which was missing.
- services/api.ts: PipelineStats / PipelineStage / ScanStatus types
and the matching client call.
- components/dialogs/SettingsDialog.tsx:
- new Pipeline Progress card with one progress bar per stage
- inline scan banner (processed/total/current folder) inside the
Library section while a scan is running
- Tasks/min throughput computed by diffing worker processed counters
between polls
- Workers section calls out the vision queue and documents the
CELERY_LIGHT/VISION_CONCURRENCY + docker compose up -d scale path
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Adds a new Map sidebar entry that plots photos by their EXIF GPS
coordinates on a clustered Leaflet map. While wiring this up, the
metadata extractor was reading unprefixed GPS keys that never exist
in `exiftool -G -j` output AND assumed coordinates were already
floats — every photo silently lost its GPS. The new extract_gps
helper handles Composite/EXIF group prefixes and parses DMS strings,
and lat/lon are stored as first-class indexed columns so the map
can query them without parsing exif_json on every request.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Duplicates section was useless: SHA-256-only detection only caught
byte-identical files, not the actual duplicates a real library
accumulates (re-encoded JPEGs, screenshots, resized exports), and the
view was a flat date-sorted list with no grouping or actions. This
replaces the whole flow.
Detection
- New phash + duplicate_group_id columns on Photo, added via an
idempotent ALTER TABLE pass in init_db (the project has no Alembic).
- Thumbs worker computes a 64-bit pHash from the original-resolution
decoded frame just before the destructive thumbnail loop. Falls back
silently — phash is nice-to-have, not a blocker for thumbnails.
- backfill_phashes Celery task fills in phashes for photos that
predated the column, reading the existing thumb_large rather than
re-decoding the original.
- regroup_duplicates service runs union-find over Hamming distance
(threshold 6), persists duplicate_group_id, and maintains is_duplicate
as derived state so existing badges/counts keep working. Chained
after scan_all_source_roots with a 60s countdown.
API
- GET /library/duplicates/groups returns all groups with members,
bucketed in Python from one query. Each group has a reason ("exact"
iff every member shares a SHA-256, "similar" otherwise).
- POST /library/maintenance/{regroup-duplicates,backfill-phashes}.
Frontend
- New DuplicatesView (sectioned grid, one section per cluster) replaces
the timeline when the user is in the duplicates section. Each section
shows a "Keep best, discard N" button that picks the highest-pixel
copy and reuses the existing undoable bulk-discard so Cmd+Z works.
- Manual best override: hover any non-best thumbnail and click "Keep
this" (Crown icon, top-right) to override the auto-pick. The header
annotates "(manual)" so it's obvious which copy will be kept.
- Keyboard nav within the duplicates view walks the flat member list,
with ↑/↓ jumping by the measured column count and scrollIntoView on
every move. Timeline's keyboard handler now early-returns in the
duplicates section so the two don't fight.
- BEST pill / Keep-this button live at top-right with a ring outline so
they don't collide visually with the cyan selection ring around a
selected cell. Dimensions chip moved to bottom-left to free both
right corners for the keep affordances.
- New "Duplicates" section in SettingsDialog: shows group/member counts
and exposes both backfill + re-detect actions, sharing a query cache
with DuplicatesView via DUPLICATE_GROUPS_QUERY_KEY.
- PhotoInfoPanel "Basic Info" section now shows the photo's full file
path in monospace below the size/dimensions/date grid.
- New imagehash==4.3.1 dep in requirements.txt.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
scan.py used scalar_one_or_none() to test whether any other photo
shared the same file_hash, but that helper raises MultipleResultsFound
the moment 2+ rows match — i.e. exactly the duplicate case it was
trying to flag. Every file beyond the second copy bombed out with
"Multiple rows were found when one or none was required" and was
left in the failed bucket. Replace with a COUNT(*) > 0 check.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three small phase-11 follow-ups in one commit since they all touch the
same surface area.
1. Watcher source-root resolution
The watch_folders task previously called scan_folder.delay(parent_dir)
when files arrived, with no source_root_id. scan_folder would then
auto-create a fresh SourceRoot for that arbitrary subdir, polluting
the source_root list. Now the watcher loads (path, id) pairs at
startup, defines find_source_root_for() that walks the parent chain,
and dispatches with the resolved id. Events under no known root are
logged at debug and ignored instead of creating stale rows.
2. Folder rename via UI
- Backend: PATCH /folders/{id} accepts { name } and updates the
SourceRoot display label only. The on-disk path is controlled by
the docker mount and intentionally not editable from the UI.
- Frontend: double-click a folder row in the LeftSidebar to start
editing; Enter or blur commits, Esc reverts. New renamingId /
renameDraft local state and a renameMutation that invalidates
['folders']. The click handler ignores clicks while the row is
in edit mode so it doesn't navigate.
- api.ts: new sourceFolders.rename(id, name) helper.
3. Bulk copy via Alt-drag onto folder
- Backend: new POST /photos/copy that mirrors /photos/move but uses
shutil.copy2 and creates fresh Photo rows with is_duplicate=true.
Name collisions are resolved by appending " (copy)", " (copy 2)",
etc., up to 100 tries before erroring. Same target_id resolution
as /move (folder id or source root id).
- Frontend: photos.copy(ids, targetId) helper. LeftSidebar's
handleDrop now takes a `copy` flag derived from e.altKey on the
drop event; folder targets dispatch copyDropMutation when held,
moveDropMutation otherwise. The drop-effect cursor flips to
'copy' on dragover when Alt is pressed so the user gets visual
confirmation. Discard target ignores the modifier.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two related polish items.
1. Drop dead TopBar buttons
- Removed the hamburger menu (Tab already toggles the sidebar),
the grid/list view-mode toggle (only Grid was ever
implemented), and the FolderOpen / Upload / Settings action
icons (no features behind them).
- TopBar is now: logo + active heap pill | search | filter
toggle. Removed the now-unused Grid/List/Menu/FolderOpen/
Upload/Settings icon imports and the dead viewMode local
state.
2. Wire live scan progress
- The frontend ScanProgress widget was already polling
/api/v1/library/scan/status, but the worker never wrote the
Redis keys that endpoint reads — it only updated celery's
internal task state. So the progress UI was permanently idle.
- Worker now writes scan:active / scan:current_folder /
scan:processed_files / scan:total_files / scan:errors at
every meaningful step. _get_redis() returns None on failure
so a Redis outage degrades gracefully (scan still runs,
progress just doesn't show).
- Pre-walk computes total_files upfront — without it the
progress bar jumped every time os.walk discovered a new
subfolder because the running total was being updated as it
went.
- Errors are RPUSHed to a capped list (MAX_ERROR_ENTRIES=50)
so a noisy scan can't blow up Redis.
- finally: clause guarantees scan:active flips to false even
on a crash, so the UI never sticks at "scanning" forever.
- scan_all_source_roots clears scan:errors and resets counters
before queuing the per-root tasks, so each top-level scan
starts with a clean slate.
Two latent bugs caught and fixed in passing:
- watch_folders was still reading settings.source_roots which
no longer exists since we moved source roots to the DB. Now
it loads them from the DB via a synchronous one-shot async
wrapper at task startup.
- _scan_all_source_roots_async was missing entirely after the
last refactor — defined inline now, reads active source
roots from the DB and dispatches scan_folder per row.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Cleans up the maze of overlapping ways folders entered the app, plus
removes the dead trash plumbing left over from the soft-discard
refactor.
Setup model (now)
- ONE env var: PHOTO_DIRS in .env, set to the host path of your
library. Compose mounts that at /photos. That's the entire setup.
- On first boot, the backend auto-creates a SourceRoot row named
"Library" pointing at /photos so the user sees their photos
immediately without configuring anything.
- Source roots and discard live in the database; mulita.yml only
carries operational settings (thumbnails, scanner, performance).
- The "Add Source Folder" dialog is now a directory browser
restricted server-side to /photos and any existing source root —
the user clicks through actual mounted directories instead of
typing container paths they can't possibly know.
Backend
- New services/scanner.bootstrap_default_source_root(): if no
SourceRoot rows exist and /photos is mounted, create one. Wired
into the lifespan handler before cleanup + initial scan.
- New GET /library/browse?path= returning the immediate child
directories of `path`, validated to live under one of the allowed
roots (default mount + every active SourceRoot). Hidden entries
are filtered. Children are tagged with is_existing_root so the UI
can show an "Added" badge. Returns parent path for up-nav, or
null when at the top of the allowed scope.
- scan_all_source_roots now reads from the DB instead of the YAML
config so DB-managed source roots are honoured by initial scan.
- Dropped the placeholder source_roots block from mulita.yml — the
paths /photos/main and /photos/iphone never existed and just
produced startup warnings.
- Dropped TrashSettings, settings.trash, settings.source_roots,
and the SourceRoot pydantic model from config.py. Soft discard
has owned this for a while; it was dead code.
Compose
- Single ${PHOTO_DIRS:-./photos}:/photos:rw mount in both backend
and worker.
- Removed the hardcoded ~/Pictures:/host/Pictures:rw mount — the
PHOTO_DIRS variable is the single source of truth now.
- Removed the trash_data named volume + mounts (no consumers).
- backend/Dockerfile no longer creates /data/trash; it now creates
/data/proxies (which the proxy endpoint actually uses).
Frontend
- AddSourceFolderDialog rewritten as a directory tree picker:
loads /library/browse on open, lets the user navigate up via a
ChevronUp button or down by clicking subfolders, shows the
current path inline, and adds whatever directory is currently
shown. Existing source roots are tagged "Added" so the user
knows what's already registered. Errors from the backend (e.g.
trying to navigate outside the allowed scope) surface inline.
- New library.browse() helper + BrowseChild / BrowseResponse types
in services/api.ts.
Docs
- README Quick Start rewritten around the single PHOTO_DIRS env
var, with macOS/Linux/Windows examples.
- New "How mounted folders and source folders relate" section that
spells out the two-layer model (mount = visibility, source root
= scanning) so the most common confusion is addressed up front.
- Added a "Read-only libraries" subsection that lists exactly which
endpoints fail under :ro.
- "Configuration" section reframed: source roots are managed by the
UI/API now, mulita.yml is operational settings only.
- .env file now has examples for the common host paths.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two related fixes:
1. Prevention — scanner now normalizes paths before lookup/insert
in get_or_create_source_root and get_or_create_folder. Trailing
slashes, redundant separators, and `.` segments all collapse to
the same row. _normalize_path uses os.path.normpath; symlinks
are intentionally NOT resolved so mount paths stay intact for
cross-machine portability.
2. Cleanup — new app/services/cleanup.py runs on backend startup
(idempotent) and merges any pre-existing duplicates left over
from older scanner versions:
- Groups source_roots by normalized path. Picks the canonical
row (preferring one with a non-empty name and the earliest
added_at), re-points child Folder rows via UPDATE, and
deletes the duplicates.
- Same for folders, with photo_count as the tiebreaker. Photos
get re-pointed to the canonical folder via UPDATE.
- Recomputes folder.photo_count from the actual non-discarded
photo membership so the sidebar count matches reality.
Wired into main.py's lifespan handler. On the dev DB this merged
the empty-name "/host/Pictures/MulitaTest/" duplicate that was
showing up alongside the canonical MulitaTest source root.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
User-facing labels and code now use "discard" (verb) and "Discarded"
(state/view label) instead of "trash" / "Trashed". The DB column names
stay (is_trashed / trashed_at) so no migration is required — only the
SQLAlchemy attribute names are renamed via Column('old_name', ...).
Backend
- Photo model: is_discarded / discarded_at attributes (DB columns
unchanged).
- PhotoBase / PhotoResponse / PhotoUpdate schemas use the new field
names.
- Photos list endpoint: is_discarded query param, filter logic.
- DELETE /photos/{id} now sets is_discarded; success message updated.
- Bulk action 'trash' renamed to 'discard'.
- backend/app/routers/trash.py renamed to discard.py with renamed
functions and route prefix /api/v1/discard.
- main.py imports and mounts the discard router.
- tasks/scan.py marks missing files as is_discarded.
Frontend
- Photo TS type: is_discarded.
- PhotoThumbnail: shows the trash-can icon when is_discarded.
- RightSidebar: button label "Discard"; mutation field name; local
variable rename.
- TopBar: discardPhotosMutation and "Discard" button; toast text
"Discarded".
- LeftSidebar: virtual node id 'discarded' / label "Discarded".
- FilterBar / filterStore / useFilterUrlSync: FlagFilter enum value
'trashed' → 'discarded'; backend param key is_discarded.
- KeyboardHints: X label "Discard".
- useKeyboardShortcuts: PhotoUpdate field rename, X handler.
- api.ts: /trash routes → /discard, trash export → discard,
bulkUpdate trash field → discard.
Out of scope (intentional): the docker-compose trash_data volume,
backend/Dockerfile mkdir /data/trash, config.py TrashSettings, and
the spec doc — all unused since soft-discard, and renaming them is
churn for no benefit.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
