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Gateway deployment

vocagateway uses the same HTTP API whether the gateway runs directly on macOS, directly on Linux, or inside its Linux container. The meaningful differences are the available speech engines, acceleration, isolation, and operational portability.

Contents

Quick starts live in the README. This page is the longer form: what to choose, how to keep it running, and how the phone reaches it. For the Planned desktop-app embed contract (platform matrix, Pairable vs Ready, Compose image pin), see desktop-embed.md.

Which deployment should I choose?

Consideration Native macOS Native Linux Docker Compose
Recommended host Apple silicon Mac Linux desktop or home server Linux amd64/arm64 when you want an image
Engines MLX Audio, WhisperKit, VocaMac, Handy, sherpa-onnx, faster-whisper, Moonshine, whisper.cpp sherpa-onnx, faster-whisper, Moonshine, optional whisper.cpp sherpa-onnx, faster-whisper, Moonshine, whisper.cpp
Acceleration Apple-native MLX and WhisperKit/Core ML paths Host CPU (Python wheels); CUDA via Docker profiles Runtime-dispatched CPU backends; CUDA or Vulkan profiles
Performance Recommended on Mac; no Linux VM No container overhead on Linux Slightly more isolation cost; strong for CUDA images
Portability macOS LaunchAgent systemd user unit Reproducible across supported Linux architectures
Persistence Files below ~/.local/share/vocagateway Same as native macOS Named volume mounted at /data
Updates Pull code, uv sync, restart LaunchAgent Pull code, uv sync, restart systemd unit Pull/build image and recreate the service

Recommendation

  • On an Apple silicon Mac, run natively and compare MLX Whisper Turbo 4-bit, MLX Parakeet, and WhisperKit on the same recording. These avoid Docker Desktop's Linux VM and keep the chosen Apple-native model resident.
  • On a Linux desktop or home server, run natively with uv sync --all-groups --extra engines when you already trust the host Python environment. Start with SenseVoice Small INT8 for its supported Asian languages plus English, or Parakeet TDT INT8 for 25 European languages. Both use sherpa-onnx wheels on amd64 and arm64; faster-whisper remains the broad Whisper fallback.
  • Use Docker on Linux when you want CUDA/Vulkan profiles, multi-arch images, or stronger isolation. Use Docker on a Mac only when reproducibility matters more than the lowest transcription latency.

There is no honest fixed speed multiplier: model size, audio length, thermals, and host hardware all matter. For an apples-to-apples comparison, dictate the same saved recording several times with equivalent model sizes and compare the Pair & test tab's three-run benchmark. It treats run 1 as model warmup/load and reports the warm average of runs 2 and 3. Compare inference time and real-time factor, not only end-to-end time.

Native macOS deployment

Install and run

# ffmpeg (required), WhisperKit CLI, and the whisper.cpp CLI
brew install ffmpeg whisperkit-cli whisper-cpp
uv sync --all-groups --extra engines --extra apple
uv run vocagateway

The default listener is 0.0.0.0:8765, while the local WebUI is http://127.0.0.1:8765/. When Tailscale Serve is the only desired ingress, override the listener:

VOCAGATEWAY_BIND_HOST=127.0.0.1 uv run vocagateway

The first run creates a mode-600 token file at ~/.config/vocagateway/token. Models default to ~/.local/share/vocagateway/models, the session database lives in the parent data directory, and WebUI choices are stored in ~/.config/vocagateway/config.json.

Run at login

./scripts/install-launch-agent.sh
launchctl print "gui/$(id -u)/com.vocahq.vocagateway"

Logs are written to ~/Library/Logs/VocaGateway/gateway.log and gateway-error.log. Re-run the installer after changing the checkout location or gateway executable.

Native Linux deployment

Install and run

# Debian / Ubuntu example
sudo apt install ffmpeg
# https://docs.astral.sh/uv/ — curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
uv sync --all-groups --extra engines
uv run vocagateway

Omit --extra apple on Linux. The default listener is 0.0.0.0:8765. When Tailscale Serve is the only desired ingress, override the listener:

VOCAGATEWAY_BIND_HOST=127.0.0.1 uv run vocagateway

Token, models, and config paths match the macOS native layout:

  • token: ~/.config/vocagateway/token
  • models: ~/.local/share/vocagateway/models
  • config: ~/.config/vocagateway/config.json

Phone clients need the bearer token (cat ~/.config/vocagateway/token) and a reachable URL such as http://192.168.1.20:8765 on a trusted LAN.

Run as a systemd user service

./scripts/install-systemd-user.sh
systemctl --user status com.vocahq.vocagateway.service
journalctl --user -u com.vocahq.vocagateway.service -f

To keep the unit after logout:

loginctl enable-linger "$USER"

Re-run the installer after moving the checkout or recreating .venv.

Docker Compose deployment

Prerequisites

  • Docker Engine with Compose v2, or Docker Desktop
  • At least enough free memory and disk space for the selected model
  • Tailscale on the host when the iPhone connects over the tailnet

The Compose project lives in this repository root:

umask 077
cp .env.example .env
printf 'VOCAGATEWAY_TOKEN=%s\n' "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" >> .env
docker compose up --detach --build

.env.example is the annotated template for the same file, organised in seven numbered sections: the token, the published host/port, the pairing-QR address, the image tag, gateway behaviour (engine, retention, the Swagger UI), the container listener, and the settings that look like they belong in .env but are never forwarded to the container. It ships the loopback publication defaults uncommented and everything else commented out with an explanation. Start from it rather than writing .env by hand, so the options are in front of you. Never commit the populated file.

The appended token overrides the empty VOCAGATEWAY_TOKEN= placeholder in the template; Compose uses the last assignment when a key repeats in .env.

VOCAGATEWAY_PUBLISH_HOST=127.0.0.1 is the safe default for Tailscale Serve. Set it to 0.0.0.0 only when direct LAN access is intentional and protected by the host firewall. Never forward the port from the public internet.

First model

The container starts before a model is installed. Confirm process liveness, then open the WebUI and download/select a recommended sherpa-onnx, Moonshine, or faster-whisper model:

docker compose ps
curl --fail http://127.0.0.1:8765/health/live

/health/ready returns HTTP 503 until the selected model is runnable. After selection it should return HTTP 200 with "status":"ready".

Routine operations

# Follow gateway logs
docker compose logs --follow gateway

# Restart without deleting data
docker compose restart gateway

# Rebuild from an updated checkout
docker compose up --detach --build

# Stop the service while preserving the named volume
docker compose down

Do not add --volumes to docker compose down unless deleting every downloaded model, stored configuration, and session record is intentional.

Persistent data and backup

Compose mounts the vocagateway_vocagateway-data named volume at /data. Inspect it with:

docker volume inspect vocagateway_vocagateway-data

Stop the gateway before taking a filesystem-level backup so the SQLite database and model directory are captured consistently. A Docker or host-native backup tool can then archive the volume shown by docker volume inspect. Keep backups private because failed recordings may remain for the configured retry period.

WhisperKit model folders cannot run in a Linux container. Download a compatible faster-whisper, Moonshine, or whisper.cpp model from the container WebUI instead of copying the native macOS model directory blindly.

Performance profiles

All three services come from the same Dockerfile; the ACCEL build argument picks the accelerator, and Compose sets it per service. Stop the running one before starting another, because all three publish the same port and share the named volume.

docker compose down

# Portable CPU (default). No profile flag needed.
docker compose up --detach --build

# NVIDIA Container Toolkit and a supported NVIDIA GPU are required.
docker compose --profile cuda up --detach --build gateway-cuda

# A working host Vulkan driver and /dev/dri are required; see below.
docker compose --profile vulkan up --detach --build gateway-vulkan

There is no separate "native" CPU profile any more, and none is needed. The CPU image is built with GGML_CPU_ALL_VARIANTS, which compiles one ggml CPU backend per micro-architecture — sse42 through haswell, zen4, alderlake and sapphirerapids on x86, armv8.0 through armv8.2+dotprod, armv8.6+i8mm and armv9.2+sme on arm64 — and dlopens the best one the host reports at startup. The image stays a portable registry artifact while still running AVX2/AVX-512 kernels on a modern x86 host and dotprod/i8mm kernels on a modern arm64 one, which is what the old native build was for.

The CUDA and Vulkan images should be published only for architectures supported by their base images and host drivers.

Giving the Vulkan container access to the GPU

Passing /dev/dri through is necessary but not sufficient. The render node is owned by root:render on the host and the gateway runs as uid 10001, so without a matching supplementary group the open fails with EACCES, Vulkan enumerates no physical device, and whisper.cpp falls back to Mesa's software rasteriser — slower than the plain CPU image, and silent about it.

Compose adds the groups for you, but their GIDs differ per distribution. Inspect the render and card nodes, then put the numeric GIDs in .env:

stat -c '%G %g %n' /dev/dri/renderD128 /dev/dri/card0
echo 'VOCAGATEWAY_RENDER_GID=993' >> .env
echo 'VOCAGATEWAY_VIDEO_GID=44' >> .env

Use the GID reported for renderD128 as VOCAGATEWAY_RENDER_GID and the GID reported for card0 as VOCAGATEWAY_VIDEO_GID. A missing card0 is harmless; the render node is the one compute requires.

The Vulkan profile ships the Mesa ICDs, so it covers AMD and Intel GPUs. NVIDIA over Vulkan needs the host ICD injected by the Container Toolkit instead; on an NVIDIA host use the CUDA profile.

Tuning the whisper.cpp build

VOCAGATEWAY_WHISPER_CMAKE_EXTRA in .env is appended to the cmake line after the defaults, so a flag set there overrides one the Dockerfile sets.

# Build CUDA kernels for one known GPU instead of the portable spread of
# virtual and real architectures ggml picks. Much faster nvcc, smaller binary,
# and the image no longer runs anywhere else.
VOCAGATEWAY_WHISPER_CMAKE_EXTRA=-DCMAKE_CUDA_ARCHITECTURES=89-real

# Build the CPU image without OpenBLAS.
VOCAGATEWAY_WHISPER_CMAKE_EXTRA=-DGGML_BLAS=OFF

VOCAGATEWAY_BUILD_JOBS caps how many compile jobs run at once; blank is resolved to the builder's CPU count. The explicit default is important because CMake otherwise lets Make interpret a bare --parallel as unlimited jobs. The cuda image is the usual reason to set a lower value: nvcc instantiates a great many templates and each job can want most of a gigabyte. Budget roughly one job per 2 GB of builder memory — an 8 GB machine normally wants VOCAGATEWAY_BUILD_JOBS=3.

OpenBLAS stays on by default because it measurably earns its place. On arm64 (Docker Desktop, --cpus 4, ggml-tiny.en, samples/jfk.wav, -bs 2 -bo 2) the BLAS build ran the clip in ~1.95-2.06 s against ~3.15-3.18 s without it — about 1.6x, consistently across five runs each. That is with the per-micro-architecture CPU kernels already in play, so it is BLAS earning it rather than BLAS compensating for a baseline build. The balance may differ on an x86 host with AVX-512; time the same clip against both images before changing it:

docker build --build-arg ACCEL=cpu --tag vocagateway:blas .
docker build --build-arg ACCEL=cpu \
  --build-arg WHISPER_CMAKE_EXTRA=-DGGML_BLAS=OFF --tag vocagateway:noblas .

for tag in blas noblas; do
  echo "== ${tag}"
  time docker run --rm \
    --volume vocagateway_vocagateway-data:/data:ro \
    --volume "$PWD/sample.wav:/tmp/sample.wav:ro" \
    --entrypoint whisper-cli "vocagateway:${tag}" \
      -m /data/models/<your-model>.bin -f /tmp/sample.wav -np -nt \
      -t "$(nproc)" -bs 2 -bo 2
done

The gateway passes -bs 2 -bo 2 and a physical-core thread count of its own, so matching them here keeps the measurement representative.

The image deliberately leaves OPENBLAS_NUM_THREADS unset. OpenBLAS-pthread sizes its pool from the host CPU count and cannot see the cgroup quota, so a container allowed two CPUs still reads nproc as whatever the host has — which looks like it should oversubscribe badly. It does not: ggml's BLAS backend issues a matmul from one thread at a time rather than from each of its workers, so the two pools never nest. Pinned to 1 and unset were within run-to-run noise for ggml-tiny.en and ggml-base.en, at --cpus 4 and --cpus 2 on a 10-CPU host. Pinning it would only cap OpenBLAS's own parallelism for no gain.

Multi-architecture image

Build one tag for both supported Linux architectures from the repository root:

docker buildx build \
  --platform linux/amd64,linux/arm64 \
  --tag ghcr.io/your-user/vocagateway:latest \
  --push .

On an amd64 builder the arm64 half of that compiles whisper.cpp under QEMU emulation, which takes tens of minutes. A native arm64 builder — a remote buildx node, or a CI runner of that architecture — is the fix; the build's ccache and uv cache mounts at least make a repeat run cheap.

Conversely, Docker Desktop on an Apple silicon Mac can validate the Linux arm64 CPU image but not the Linux amd64 or NVIDIA CUDA paths. Pull requests that touch container inputs run the Container GitHub Actions matrix for CPU, CUDA, and Vulkan; use that result for cross-platform validation rather than treating one local M1 build as coverage of all three variants. The CI CUDA build is a compile-only check narrowed to one representative GPU architecture and omits the CPU variants already exercised by the CPU job. It is deliberately faster than the portable CUDA image produced from the unmodified Dockerfile defaults.

Set VOCAGATEWAY_IMAGE in .env to use that tag for the gateway service. It renames what is built; it does not switch Compose to pulling. up --build still builds locally and applies the tag, so run docker compose pull followed by docker compose up --detach --no-build when you explicitly want the registry image. The gateway-cuda and gateway-vulkan services carry fixed tags and ignore the variable.

Gateway URL and network placement

The iPhone app accepts any gateway URL with an explicit http:// or https:// scheme and a valid hostname. Tailscale is one option rather than a requirement.

Trusted local network

The native gateway already listens on all interfaces by default. For Docker, set the Compose publication in .env:

VOCAGATEWAY_PUBLISH_HOST=0.0.0.0
VOCAGATEWAY_PUBLISH_PORT=8765

Protect port 8765 with the host firewall, ensure the hostname resolves from the iPhone, and use a URL such as http://homelabone:8765/. Approve Local Network access when iOS asks. Plain HTTP exposes recordings and the bearer token to anyone who can inspect the network, so use it only on a trusted LAN or encrypted VPN and never forward it from a router.

With the default bridge network, the container only ever sees its own private bridge address (for example 172.19.0.2), never the host's real Wi-Fi/Ethernet interface — so the pairing card's auto-discovered candidate list won't include a 192.168.x.x address even after the change above.

The portable fix is to stop relying on discovery and name the address the phone should use:

VOCAGATEWAY_PUBLIC_URL=http://192.168.1.20:8765

The gateway puts that URL first in the pairing card and encodes it in the QR. It works on every Docker flavour, including Docker Desktop on macOS and Windows, and is the only option there. VOCAGATEWAY_PAIRING_URL is an accepted alias, checked second.

On Linux Docker Engine (not Docker Desktop) you can instead share the host's network namespace so discovery sees the real LAN IP by itself:

VOCAGATEWAY_NETWORK_MODE=host

VOCAGATEWAY_PUBLISH_HOST/VOCAGATEWAY_PUBLISH_PORT are ignored in this mode — Compose discards the ports: mapping and the container binds straight onto the host per VOCAGATEWAY_BIND_HOST (0.0.0.0 by default) and VOCAGATEWAY_PORT (8765 by default). That means the host firewall is now the only thing standing between port 8765 and every interface on the box, including any public one — lock it down before enabling this.

Tailscale Serve

Both native and Compose deployments can remain on host loopback:

tailscale serve --bg 8765
tailscale serve status

Enter the reported private HTTPS URL in the iPhone app. Tailscale identity is an additional network boundary; the vocaphone bearer token remains required. See Private Tailscale connectivity for the complete setup.

VPS or public DNS

Keep the gateway published on 127.0.0.1, place an HTTPS reverse proxy such as Caddy or nginx in front of it, and use a trusted certificate for the public hostname. Enter a URL such as https://dictation.example.com/ in the app.

Keep bearer authentication enabled at the gateway even if the reverse proxy has its own access control. Do not expose port 8765 directly or use unencrypted HTTP over the public internet.

Configuration paths and env vars

Native installs store the bootstrap token at ~/.config/vocagateway/token, engine settings at ~/.config/vocagateway/config.json, and application data under ~/.local/share/vocagateway/. Docker Compose persists the same layout under /data in the vocagateway-data named volume.

Under Compose those paths are not tunable from .env. compose.yaml forwards only the variables it names, so VOCAGATEWAY_DATA_DIR, VOCAGATEWAY_MODELS_DIR, VOCAGATEWAY_CONFIG_FILE, VOCAGATEWAY_TOKEN_FILE, and the macOS engine paths are read out of .env and dropped — docker compose config passes and nothing changes. Move container data by remapping the vocagateway-data volume.

Environment variables use the VOCAGATEWAY_* prefix (for example VOCAGATEWAY_TOKEN, VOCAGATEWAY_BIND_HOST, VOCAGATEWAY_PUBLIC_URL). The Python package and primary CLI are vocagateway (vocagateway, vocagateway-token, and related scripts). Deprecated vocaphone-* aliases still resolve for one cycle. Older VOCAPHONE_* names and ~/.config/vocaphone/ paths are not read. Full contract: configuration.md.

Downloaded models carry a .vocagateway-model.json marker file in each model directory.

The WebUI, API routes (/v1/*, /health/*), pairing protocol, and engine IDs are unchanged.