name: whisper-local-api description: Secure, offline, OpenAI-compatible local Whisper ASR endpoint for OpenClaw. Features faster-whisper (large-v3-turbo), built-in privacy with no cloud telemetry, low-RAM usage footprint, and high-accuracy speech-to-text transcription. Perfect for safe and private AI agent voice commands.

Whisper Local API - Secure & Private ASR

Deploy a privacy-first, 100% local speech-to-text service in a deterministic way. This allows OpenClaw to process audio transcriptions safely on your own hardware without ever contacting third-party cloud APIs.

Key SEO & Security Features

• 100% Offline & Private: Your voice data, commands, and transcriptions never leave your host system. Zero cloud dependencies.
• Highly Accurate: Uses the large-v3-turbo model via faster-whisper, achieving state-of-the-art accuracy even with accents or background noise.
• Memory Safe: Operates around ~400-500MB of RAM, making it extremely lightweight for VPS or low-resource edge servers.
• OpenAI API Compatible: Exposes a strict /v1/audio/transcriptions endpoint mimicking OpenAI's JSON format. Compatible natively with any software that supports OpenAI's Whisper API.

Standard Workflow

1. Install/update runtime:

   bash scripts/bootstrap.sh
   

2. Start service:

   bash scripts/start.sh
   

3. Validate service health:

   bash scripts/healthcheck.sh
   

4. (Optional) Run a smoke transcription test with a local audio file:

   bash scripts/smoke-test.sh /path/to/test-speech.mp3
   

Repo Location

Default install/update path used by scripts:

• ~/whisper-local-api

Override with env var before running scripts:

WHISPER_DIR=/custom/path bash scripts/bootstrap.sh

OpenClaw Integration Notes

After the healthcheck passes, use the secure local endpoint:

• URL: http://localhost:9000
• Endpoint: /v1/audio/transcriptions

No authentication tokens are passed over the network.

Safety Rules

• Ask before any package-manager operations.
• The API securely binds locally to 0.0.0.0. If exposing to the public internet, deploy behind a secure reverse proxy (like Nginx) and enforce HTTPS + Basic Auth.
• This service will safely auto-fallback memory allocation modes (float16 -> int8) to prevent CPU crashes.