BEN2 becomes the new default local backend (clean cutouts, strong on
hair/fur edges), with BiRefNet-HR available as a high-res/print
alternate and U2Net kept as the lightweight fallback. Both are
MIT-licensed and download weights from HuggingFace on first use
(cached via the existing hf_cache bind mount), unlike U2Net/SAM which
need an explicit download script.
- config: new BG_REMOVAL_MODEL setting (default "ben2")
- tools.py: remove-background-base64 now tries local backends in
order (request.model override > BG_REMOVAL_MODEL > ben2/u2net),
falling back to rembg's birefnet-general session as a last resort
- requirements.gpu.txt / Dockerfile.gpu: add ben2 + transformers deps
needed for the new backends, with a build-time smoke test for ben2
- frontend: model dropdown in the Remove Background dialog, threaded
through api.js to the new request field
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Ro4PwQKvSc3CH19LSN21Ht
Build / pip layer fixes:
- Add BUILDID ARG to Dockerfile.gpu; pass from docker-compose.gpu.yml build args
so pip layers can be force-busted without --no-cache:
BUILDID=$(date +%s) docker compose -f docker-compose.gpu.yml up --build
Model download (DNS-blocked environments):
- Change HF model cache from named volume to ./data/hf_cache bind mount
so models can be pre-downloaded on the host (no rebuild needed)
- Remove now-unused hf_model_cache named volume
- README: add iptables fix + huggingface-cli offline download instructions
Error handling improvements:
- ai_edit_region: catch ConnectError/Errno-3 → return 503 with exact fix commands
- _require_remote: give actionable message when local_gpu provider fails to load
- _build_provider: catch AttributeError (torch.xpu from wrong diffusers) not just ImportError
- local_diffusion.py: fix docstring to reflect <0.29.0 pin
https://claude.ai/code/session_01WVDg7amsy1TTtxvpku7bcM