Files

insightface backend (LocalAI)

Face recognition backend backed by ONNX Runtime. Provides face verification (1:1), face analysis (age/gender), face detection, face embedding, and — via LocalAI's built-in vector store — 1:N identification.

Engines

This backend ships with two interchangeable engines selected via LoadModel.Options["engine"]:

engine Implementation Models License
insightface (default) insightface.app.FaceAnalysis buffalo_l, buffalo_s, antelopev2 Non-commercial research use only
onnx_direct OpenCV FaceDetectorYN + FaceRecognizerSF OpenCV Zoo YuNet + SFace Apache 2.0 (commercial-safe)

Both engines implement the same FaceEngine protocol in engines.py, so the gRPC servicer in backend.py doesn't need to know which one is active.

LoadModel options

Common:

option default description
engine insightface one of insightface, onnx_direct
det_size 640x640 (insightface), 320x320 (onnx_direct) detector input size
det_thresh 0.5 detector confidence threshold
verify_threshold 0.35 default cosine distance cutoff for FaceVerify

insightface engine:

option default description
model_pack buffalo_l which insightface pack to load

onnx_direct engine:

option default description
detector_onnx (required) path to YuNet-compatible ONNX
recognizer_onnx (required) path to SFace-compatible ONNX

Adding a new model pack

  1. If it's an insightface pack (auto-downloadable or manually extracted into ~/.insightface/models/<name>/), just add a new gallery entry in backend/index.yaml with options: ["engine:insightface", "model_pack:<name>"]. No code change.
  2. If it's an Apache-licensed ONNX pair, add a gallery entry with options: ["engine:onnx_direct", "detector_onnx:...", "recognizer_onnx:..."]. If the detector or recognizer has a different input-tensor shape than YuNet/SFace, you may need a new engine implementation in engines.py; the two-engine seam makes that a self-contained change.

Running tests locally

make -C backend/python/insightface         # install deps + bake models
make -C backend/python/insightface test    # run test.py

The OpenCV Zoo tests skip gracefully when /models/opencv/*.onnx is absent (e.g. on dev boxes where install.sh wasn't run).