model-browser

Live demo: models.masamaeda.com

A local browser for a 3D-print model library. Point it at a directory tree full of STL/3MF/OBJ files (zips included) and it gives you a thumbnail grid you can orbit, search, and send to your slicer.

Quick start

bun install
bun run dev        # server on 127.0.0.1:3177, UI on http://localhost:5173

Open http://localhost:5173 and type an absolute path to your model library in the path bar. That's it — thumbnails render in the background and cache to ~/.cache/model-browser/.

Using it

• Browse — folders and zip archives open like directories (one level of zip nesting; paths look like pack.zip!/part.stl).
• Orbit — press and drag on any model tile to spin it live; the thumbnail keeps the camera angle you leave it at.
• Expand — click a tile for the full lightbox: orbit, zoom, orbit-axis control, and file details.
• Right-click — context menu with copy path, re-render, find similar, and open-in-slicer actions.
• Search — filename search from the top bar, and an optional meaning mode ("a chunky dragon on a rocky base") when the embedding sidecar is running. The same sidecar powers "find similar" and the upright pose each tile is drawn at.

Opening models in your slicer

The context menu offers "open in …" for every application your OS associates with the model's type (STL/3MF/OBJ), default first. It reads your desktop-entry registry — there is no in-app slicer configuration:

• Pin a default: xdg-mime default lycheeslicer.desktop model/stl, or use any "always open with" affordance your desktop has.

• Slicer missing from the menu? Its desktop entry probably doesn't declare model types. Drop a corrected entry in ~/.local/share/applications/ — a ten-line file. Example (photon-workshop.desktop for a Wine-installed slicer):

  [Desktop Entry]
  Type=Application
  Name=Photon Workshop
  Exec=wine start /ProgIDOpen PhotonWorkShop %f
  MimeType=model/stl;
  

• "Open with…" hands the file to a chooser command of your choice (e.g. a rofi picker). Configure it in ~/.config/model-browser/launch.json; the menu item is hidden until you do:

  {
    "chooser": ["/home/you/bin/open-with", "{file}"]
  }
  

  The same file can override any launch operation with an argv template ({mime}, {appId}, {file} placeholders; no shell involved) — see docs/platform-surface.md for the operations and their contracts. Linux is the implemented platform; the doc sketches what Windows/macOS ports would swap in.

The server must run inside your graphical session (it launches GUI apps on your display) — starting bun run dev from a normal terminal is exactly that.

Semantic search (optional)

A separate embedding service (SigLIP) answering on port 8077 adds three things, all from the same index — the UI calls it meaning search:

• Meaning mode on the top-bar search ranks the models in the folder you're browsing against a phrase, instead of matching filenames.
• Find similar, in a tile's context menu, ranks the whole collection against that model.
• Poses — the orientation each model is drawn at, so tiles sit upright rather than however the file happened to be authored. An orbit still overrides it.

Starting it

The service is mini-classify, started by hand:

cd mini-classify
.venv/bin/python serve_api.py <collection root> --cache-dir <embedding cache> --port 8077

The collection root must lie inside your model library — an index of models the app can't reach covers nothing. The positional root overrides whichever root the cache recorded when it was built, which is how one cache can serve a moved or re-derived copy of its corpus. For a containerised setup, see deploy/demo/README.md.

MODEL_BROWSER_INDEX points the server at a different address; setting it to the empty string turns the feature off outright.

Without it, and while it warms

The app runs fine: browsing, thumbnails and name search don't touch the index, and the meaning toggle simply doesn't appear. The states the UI reports are distinct and worth reading literally:

• Not running — a refused connection. This is not "still warming"; nothing is listening.
• Starting up — roughly 15s while SigLIP loads, during which queries are refused. A meaning search typed now isn't lost: you get the folder listing meanwhile and the search runs when the index answers.
• Didn't finish starting — the load reported a failure, or stalled past three minutes. Most often the wrong --cache-dir: a cache with no embeddings in it.

The panel also states what the index covers for the folder you're in ("12 of 40 models here are indexed"), so a thin result set is legible rather than mysterious.

Tuning

The Search tab exposes what the ranking does: read the phrase as written or through a template, pool a model's views by mean/max/softmax, and bound the results by a count (default 60), a score floor (default 0.10), or both — at least one is always in force, since an unbounded meaning search is the entire collection. Mode and tuning ride in the URL, so a meaning search is a link you can share.

What it's bad at

Worth knowing before you read a flat result as a bug:

• It ranks, it doesn't judge. A query the corpus barely represents either returns nothing ("Nothing matched"), or returns whatever was least far. The "Nothing stood out — these are the closest" notice catches only the second case, and only when the result is unambiguous noise — it measures how far the best hit stands out from the collection's own spread, not whether it is right. A confident near-miss clears that bar easily and arrives unmarked.
• A near miss is often a legitimate reading of your query. "Wizard with a staff" brings back an orc shaman, who does carry a staff; "witch on a broomstick" brings back a mounted rider. Neighbouring concepts smear together for the same reason — vampires, zombies and skeletons all sit near "undead", so searching one brings the others.
• It matches multi-part queries part by part. "An elf carrying an orb" brings back elves, and people holding orbs, alongside the elves holding orbs.

Development

bun run test         # vitest, both workspaces
bun run typecheck    # tsc, both workspaces

• Run a single workspace's tests from its directory (cd client && bunx vitest run) — not from the repo root.
• The repo is spec-driven: behavior lives in openspec/specs/, changes flow through openspec/changes/. CLAUDE.md carries the working agreements (architecture constraints, testing sharp edges) and is worth reading even if you're human.
• server/ is Hono and must run on Node unchanged (Bun-only APIs are confined to its entry point); client/ is React + Vite + three.js with a single shared WebGL renderer.