When a repo id resolves to no diffusion family the load raised 'Could not infer a
diffusion family... Pass family_override (z-image)', which points at an unrelated
family and doesn't say what is supported. Replace it with a message that lists the
supported families (from a new supported_family_names helper) and notes that video
models and image models whose diffusers transformer has no single-file loader are
not supported. Applies to both the diffusers and native sd.cpp load paths. Also
refreshes two stale family-registry comments that still called FLUX.2-dev omitted.
Add ControlNet conditioning, the #2 most-used diffusion workflow after
LoRA, on the diffusers backend for the families with ControlNet pipelines
(FLUX.1 and Qwen-Image), with Union models as the default picks.
Backend
- New core/inference/diffusion_controlnet.py: family-gated discovery
(curated Union models + local dirs + bare owner/name repos), resolution
to a loadable repo/dir, control-image preprocessing (passthrough +
a dependency-free canny edge map), and a supports_controlnet gate.
- diffusion.py: a ControlNet manager parallel to the LoRA one. Loads the
(small) ControlNet model once via from_pretrained (cached by id) and
builds the family's ControlNet pipeline via Pipeline.from_pipe(base,
controlnet=model), reusing the resident base modules at their loaded
dtype (no reload, no recast). Passes the control image + conditioning
scale + guidance start/end at generate time; cleared on unload.
- Families: FLUX.1 -> FluxControlNetPipeline/Model, Qwen-Image ->
QwenImageControlNetPipeline/Model. Others declare none (gated off).
- Gated off for the native engine, GGUF-via-diffusers, and torchao
fp8/int8 dense (same rule as LoRA). v1 conditions txt2img only.
- Request contract: optional controlnet on DiffusionGenerateRequest;
supports_controlnet in status; the choice persisted in gallery meta.
- New GET /api/models/diffusion-controlnets for the picker.
Frontend
- A ControlNet control in the Images rail (model select + control-image
upload + control-type select + strength slider), gated by the loaded
model's supports_controlnet + family, shown for text-to-image.
Tests
- New test_diffusion_controlnet.py (10): discovery/resolve/preprocess/gate
helpers, request validation, family wiring, and the diffusers pipe
manager (loads once, caches, from_pipe with controlnet, rejects
unsupported families).
Add community LoRA support across both diffusion backends, the single
biggest step toward broad image-workflow coverage.
Backend
- New shared module core/inference/diffusion_lora.py: adapter discovery
(local scan + curated catalog + owner/name[:file] Hub refs), download
via hf_hub_download_with_xet_fallback, alias sanitization, native
managed-dir materialization with collision-broken aliases, prompt-tag
injection (deduped against user-typed tags), and a supports_lora gate.
- Native sd-cli: resolve + materialize selected LoRAs into a per-run
managed dir, inject <lora:ALIAS:w> tags, pass --lora-model-dir with
--lora-apply-mode auto. The arg builder already emitted these flags.
- Diffusers: non-fused load_lora_weights + set_adapters manager, tracked
on the pipe so an unchanged selection is a no-op and a model swap
resets; cleared on unload. Never fuses (breaks quantized transformers
and blocks live weight tweaks).
- Gated off where unsupported: torchao fp8/int8 dense, GGUF-via-diffusers,
and native Qwen-Image (no LoRA name-conversion branch upstream).
- Request contract: optional loras on DiffusionGenerateRequest; empty or
omitted is identical to today. supports_lora surfaced in status; chosen
LoRAs persisted in gallery recipe metadata.
- New GET /api/models/diffusion-loras for the picker (family-filtered).
Frontend
- Repeatable multi-LoRA picker (adapter select + weight slider 0..2 +
remove), gated by the loaded model's supports_lora and family, max 8.
Tests
- New test_diffusion_lora.py (14): helpers, request validation, native
tag/dir wiring, diffusers set_adapters manager, supports_lora matrix.
Backend:
- Load non-GGUF safetensors models: full bnb-4bit pipelines and single-file
fp8 transformers, gated to the unsloth org plus a curated allowlist.
- Image-conditioned workflows built with Pipeline.from_pipe so they reuse the
loaded transformer/VAE/text-encoder with no extra VRAM: img2img, inpaint,
outpaint, and a hires-fix upscale pass.
- Instruction editing as its own family kind (Qwen-Image-Edit-2511,
FLUX.1-Kontext-dev) and FLUX.2-klein reference conditioning (single and
multi-reference) plus klein inpaint.
- Auto-resize odd-sized inputs to a multiple of 16 (and resize the matched
mask) so img2img/inpaint/edit no longer reject non-/16 uploads. Bound the
decoded image size and cap upscale output to avoid OOM on large inputs.
- Fixes: from_pipe defaulting to a float32 recast that crashed torchao
quantized transformers; image-conditioned calls forcing the slider size
onto the input image. Native sd.cpp engine rejects image-conditioned and
reference requests it cannot serve.
Frontend:
- Redesigned Images page with capability-gated workflow tabs (Create,
Transform, Inpaint, Extend, Upscale, Reference, Edit), a brush mask editor,
client-side outpaint, and a multi-reference picker.
- Advanced options moved to a right-docked panel mirroring Chat: closed by
default, toggled by a single fixed top-bar button that stays in place.
sd.cpp installer: pin the release, verify each download's sha256, add a
download timeout, and make the source repo configurable for a future mirror.
- diffusion: a torchao-quantized transformer is committed only compiled. A dense model
resolves to speed_mode=off, which would run the quant eager (~30x slower than the GGUF
it replaced), so when transformer_quant engaged and speed resolved to off, promote to
default (regional compile); warn loudly if compile still does not engage.
- diffusion_transformer_quant: build the nvfp4 config with use_triton_kernel=False so the
CUTLASS FP4 path is used (torchao defaults to the Triton kernel, which needs MSLK);
otherwise the smoke probe fails on CUTLASS-only Blackwell and silently drops to GGUF.
- nvfp4_probe: repo-relative output dir + --out-dir (was an author-absolute /mnt path).
- test asserts the eager-quant -> default-compile promotion.
- SECURITY: a request-supplied local pre-quant path is now unpickled only when it
resolves inside an operator-configured ALLOWLIST of directories
(UNSLOTH_ALLOW_LOCAL_PREQUANT_PATH = dir[:dir...]). The previous boolean opt-in,
once enabled for one trusted checkpoint, allowed torch.load(weights_only=False) on
any path a load request named (arbitrary code execution). realpath() blocks symlink
escapes; a bare on/off toggle is no longer a wildcard.
- Validate the checkpoint's min_features against the runtime Linear filter, so a
checkpoint that quantised a different layer set is rejected instead of silently
loading a model that mismatches the dense path while reporting the same scheme.
- Tolerant base_model_id compare (exact or same final path/repo segment), so a local
path or fork of the canonical base is accepted instead of falling back to dense.
- _has_meta_tensors uses any(chain(...)) (no intermediate lists).
- prequant verify/probe scripts use repo-relative paths (+ env overrides), not the
author's absolute /mnt paths.
- tests: allowlist-dir opt-in, outside-allowlist refusal, min_features mismatch, fork tail.
- snapshot_backend_flags reads each flag defensively (getattr + hasattr), so a build/platform
missing one (no cuda.matmul on CPU/MPS) still captures the rest instead of skipping the
whole snapshot. restore_backend_flags restores each flag independently so one failure can't
leave the others leaked process-wide.
- load_pipeline restores the flags (and clears the GPU cache) when the build fails after
apply_speed_optims mutated the process-wide flags but before _state captured them for unload
to restore -- otherwise a failed default/max load left cudnn.benchmark/TF32 on and
contaminated later off generations.
- apply_step_cache now engages only via the transformer's native enable_cache (the diffusers
CacheMixin path), which exists exactly when the pipeline wraps the transformer call in a
cache_context. The standalone apply_first_block_cache fallback installed on non-CacheMixin
transformers too (e.g. Z-Image), whose pipeline opens no cache_context, so the load reported
transformer_cache=fbcache and then the first generation crashed inside the hook. Such a model
now runs uncached per the best-effort contract.
- GGUF transformers are quantized (the default Studio load path), so they now use the higher
quantized FBCache threshold when the caller leaves it unset, instead of the dense default
that could keep the cache from triggering.
- fbcache_flux_probe.py: compile cached runs with fullgraph=False (FBCache is a graph break, so
fullgraph=True failed warmup and silently measured an eager cached run); output dir is now
relative to the script, not a hardcoded path.
Add opt-in step caching (First-Block-Cache) for the diffusion transformer. Across
denoise steps a DiT's output settles, so once the first block's residual barely
changes the remaining blocks are skipped and their cached output reused. diffusers
ships it natively (FirstBlockCacheConfig + transformer.enable_cache, with the
standalone apply_first_block_cache hook as a fallback).
Measured on Flux.1-dev (28 steps, 1024px): ~1.4x on top of torch.compile (2.83 ->
2.03s) at LPIPS ~0.08 vs the no-cache output, well inside the quality bar.
OFF by default and a per-load opt-in: the win scales with step count, so it is for
many-step models (Flux / Qwen-Image) and pointless for few-step distilled models
(e.g. Z-Image-Turbo at ~8 steps), where a single skipped step is a large fraction
of the trajectory. It composes with regional compile only with fullgraph=False (the
cache's per-step decision is a torch.compiler.disable graph break), which the speed
layer now switches to automatically when a cache is engaged. Best-effort: a model
whose block signature the hook does not recognise is caught and the load proceeds
uncached.
- new core/inference/diffusion_cache.py: normalize_transformer_cache + apply_step_cache
(enable_cache / apply_first_block_cache fallback; threshold auto-raised for a
quantised transformer per ParaAttention's fp8 guidance; lazy diffusers import).
- diffusion_speed.py: apply_speed_optims takes cache_active; compile drops fullgraph
when a cache is engaged.
- diffusion.py: apply_step_cache before compile; thread transformer_cache /
transformer_cache_threshold through begin_load -> load_pipeline and report the
engaged mode in status().
- models/inference.py + routes/inference.py: transformer_cache (off | fbcache) and
transformer_cache_threshold request fields, engaged mode in the status response.
- hermetic tests for normalisation, the enable_cache / hook-fallback paths, threshold
selection, and best-effort failure handling, plus route threading + validation.
- scripts/fbcache_flux_probe.py: the Flux validation probe (latency / speedup / VRAM /
LPIPS vs the compiled no-cache baseline).
Add a selectable attention kernel via the diffusers set_attention_backend
dispatcher. Attention is memory-bandwidth bound, so a better kernel is an
end-to-end win orthogonal to the linear-weight quantisation (it speeds the QK/PV
matmuls torchao never touches) and composes with torch.compile.
auto picks the best exact backend for the device: cuDNN fused attention
(_native_cudnn) on NVIDIA when a speed profile is active, measured ~1.18x
end-to-end on a B200 (Z-Image 1024px/8 steps) with LPIPS ~0.004 vs the default
(below the compile/quant noise floor); native SDPA elsewhere and when speed=off
(so off stays bit-identical). Explicit native/cudnn/flash/flash3/flash4/sage/
xformers/aiter are honored, and an unavailable kernel falls back to the default
rather than failing the load.
New core/inference/diffusion_attention.py (normalize + per-device select + apply,
best-effort, lazy imports). Set on pipe.transformer BEFORE compile in load_pipeline;
attention_backend threads through begin_load / load_pipeline / status like the other
load knobs. New request field attention_backend + status field. Hermetic CPU tests
for normalize / select policy / apply fallback, plus route threading + 422. Measured
via scripts/perf_levers_probe.py.
The Phase 8 fast transformer_quant path materialises the dense bf16 transformer on
the GPU and torchao-quantises it in place, so its load peak is ~2x GGUF's (~21 vs
13.4 GB) plus a ~12 GB download. Add a pre-quantized branch: quantise once offline
(scripts/build_prequant_checkpoint.py) and at runtime build the transformer skeleton
on the meta device (accelerate.init_empty_weights) and load_state_dict(assign=True)
the quantized weights, so the dense bf16 never touches the GPU.
Measured (B200, Z-Image fp8): full-pipeline GPU load peak 21.2 -> 14.6 GB (matching
GGUF's 13.4), on-disk 12 -> 6.28 GB, output bit-identical (LPIPS 0.0). It is the same
torchao config + min_features filter the runtime path uses, applied ahead of time.
New core/inference/diffusion_prequant.py (resolve_prequant_source +
load_prequantized_transformer, best-effort, lazy imports). diffusion.py
_load_dense_quant_pipeline tries the pre-quant source first and falls back to the
dense materialise+quantise path, then to GGUF, so the default is unchanged.
DiffusionLoadRequest gains transformer_prequant_path; DiffusionFamily gains an empty
prequant_repos map for hosted checkpoints (hosting deferred). Hermetic CPU tests for
the resolver, the meta-init+assign loader, and the backend branch selection +
fallbacks; GPU verification via scripts/verify_prequant_backend.py.
Consumer/workstation GPUs (GDDR) halve fp8 FP32-accumulate throughput, so they want
fast (FP16) accumulate; data-center HBM parts (B200/H100/A100/L40) are not nerfed and
prefer the higher-precision FP32 accumulate. Add _is_consumer_gpu() (token-exact match
on the device name per NVIDIA's GPU list, so workstation A4000 != data-center A40;
GeForce/TITAN and unknown default to consumer) and gate the fp8 use_fast_accum on it.
Measured: fast accumulate is ~2x on consumer Blackwell and ~8% on B200 (0.608 vs 0.665s),
no overflow, quality below the quant noise floor. So the default leans to accuracy on
data-center; a new request field transformer_quant_fast_accum (null=auto, true/false=force)
lets the operator override per load (scripts/diffusion_bench.py --fp8-fast-accum auto|on|off).
187 diffusion tests pass (+ consumer detection, _resolve_fast_accum, and the override
threading).
Add an opt-in transformer_quant mode that loads the dense bf16 transformer and
torchao-quantises it onto the low-precision tensor cores, instead of the GGUF
transformer (which dequantises to bf16 per matmul and so runs at bf16 rate). On a
B200 (Z-Image-Turbo, 1024px/8 steps): auto picks fp8 at 0.614s vs GGUF+compile's
0.823s (1.34x), int8 0.626s (1.32x), both at lower LPIPS than GGUF's own 4-bit floor.
GGUF+compile stays the low-memory default and the fallback. The mode is gated on
CUDA + bf16 + resident VRAM headroom (the dense load peaks ~21GB vs GGUF's 13GB);
any unsupported arch/scheme, OOM, or quant failure falls back to GGUF with a logged
reason. auto picks the best scheme per GPU via a real quantise+matmul smoke probe
(Blackwell nvfp4/fp8/mxfp8, Ada/Hopper fp8, Ampere int8); a min-features filter skips
the tiny projections that crash int8's torch._int_mm. New module mirrors
diffusion_precision.py; quant runs before compile before placement.
184 -> tests pass; new test_diffusion_transformer_quant.py plus backend/route
coverage. scripts/diffusion_bench.py gains --transformer-quant; scripts/quant_probe.py
is the standalone torchao lever probe.
Re-review of the diffusion stack (#6675/#6679/#6680) surfaced one real accuracy
bug and a dead-on-arrival speed path; this fixes both and adds the lossless /
near-lossless wins, all measured on a B200.
Correctness:
- TF32 global-state leak (fix). speed_mode=max flipped torch.backends.*.allow_tf32
process-wide and never restored them, so a later `off` load silently inherited
TF32 and was no longer bit-identical. Added snapshot_backend_flags /
restore_backend_flags (TF32 + cudnn.benchmark), captured before the speed layer
runs and restored on unload. Verified: load max -> unload -> load off is now
byte-identical (PSNR inf) to a fresh off.
- sd-cli timeout could hang forever. _run() blocked in `for line in stdout` and
only checked the timeout after EOF, so a child stuck in model load / GPU init
with no output ignored the timeout. Drained stdout on a reader thread with a
wall-clock deadline. Added a silent-hang regression test.
Speed (diffusers path), near-lossless, opt-in tiers:
- Regional torch.compile now runs on the GGUF transformer. The is_gguf gate (and
Z-Image's supports_torch_compile=False) were stale: compile_repeated_blocks
compiles and runs ~2.2x faster on the GGUF Z-Image transformer on
torch 2.9.1 / diffusers 0.38 (the per-op dequant stays eager, the rest of the
block compiles). Measured: off 1.80s -> default 0.82s/gen (+54.7%), PSNR 37.7 dB
vs eager -- far above the Q4 quant noise floor (~21 dB), so it does not move
output quality. Gate relaxed; default tier delivers it.
- cudnn.benchmark added to the default tier (autotunes the fixed-shape VAE convs).
- torch.inference_mode() around the pipeline call (lossless, strictly faster than
the no_grad diffusers uses internally).
Memory path:
- VAE tiling (not bit-identical >1MP) restricted to the model/sequential/CPU tiers;
the balanced (group) tier keeps exact slicing only, so it is now bit-identical to
the resident image (verified PSNR inf) and slightly faster.
- Group offload adds non_blocking + record_stream on the CUDA stream path to
overlap each block's H2D copy with compute (lossless; gated on the installed
diffusers signature so older versions still work).
Native (sd.cpp) path:
- native_speed_flags: a first-class speed knob (default -> --diffusion-fa, a
near-lossless CUDA win that was previously only added on offload tiers; max also
-> --diffusion-conv-direct). conv-direct stays opt-in: measured +45% on CUDA, so
it is never auto-on. Engine generate() merges it, de-duped against offload flags.
Default profile: a GGUF model with no explicit speed_mode now resolves to the
`default` profile (resolve_speed_mode), since compile's perturbation sits below the
quantisation noise floor and so does not reduce quality versus the dense reference;
out of the box a GGUF Z-Image generation drops from 1.80s to 0.81s. Dense models
stay `off` / bit-identical, and an explicit speed_mode -- including "off" -- is
always honored, so the byte-identical path remains one flag away and is the
regression reference.
Tooling: scripts/compile_probe.py (eager vs compiled GGUF probe), scripts/
perf_verify.py (the B200 verification above), and diffusion_bench.py gains
--speed-mode so the speed tiers are benchmarkable.
Tests: 183 passing (was 166); new coverage for the backend-flag snapshot/restore,
GGUF compile eligibility, the balanced tiling/slicing split, native_speed_flags +
the engine de-dup, and the sd-cli silent-hang timeout.
Generalise the text-encoder precision knob from a fp8 bool to text_encoder_quant
(fp8 | nvfp4). nvfp4 quantises the companion text encoder to 4-bit via torchao
NVFP4 weight-only (two-level microscaling) on Blackwell's FP4 tensor cores; fp8
stays the broader-hardware path (cc>=8.9). Both are gated, best-effort, and run
before placement; status reports the mode actually engaged. This is the lean
realisation of GGUF-native text-encoder quant: 4-bit on the encoder without the
3045-line port.
Verified on Z-Image (B200, balanced/group where the encoder stays resident), vs the
bf16 encoder: nvfp4 cut generation peak VRAM 48% (10840 -> 5593 MB, the lowest TE
option, below whole-model offload) at near-fp8 quality (16.4 vs 17.1 dB PSNR), and
both quants ran faster than bf16. A memory-vs-quality tradeoff (off by default);
size it per model with the Phase 5 quality harness. diffusion_bench gains
--text-encoder-quant.
129 CPU tests pass.
Add a text_encoder_fp8 knob that casts the companion text encoder(s) to fp8 (e4m3)
storage via diffusers apply_layerwise_casting, upcasting per layer to the bf16
compute dtype while normalisations and embeddings stay full precision. Applied
before placement, gated to CUDA + bf16, best-effort (a failure leaves the encoder
dense). status reports which encoders were cast.
Verified on Z-Image (B200, balanced/group mode where the encoder stays resident):
generation peak VRAM dropped 37% (10840 -> 6791 MB, below the lowest-VRAM offload)
at near-resident speed. It is a memory-vs-quality tradeoff, not free -- ~20 dB PSNR
vs the bf16 encoder, a larger shift than one transformer quant step -- so it is off
by default and documented as such, with the Phase 5 harness to size the cost.
127 CPU tests pass.
Add a speed_mode knob (off by default, so the render path stays bit-identical):
default applies channels_last VAE + regional torch.compile of the denoiser's
repeated block where eligible; max also enables TF32 matmul and fused QKV. Regional
compile is gated off for the GGUF transformer (dequantises per-op) and for families
flagged not compile-friendly (a new supports_torch_compile flag, False for Z-Image),
so it activates automatically only once a non-GGUF bf16 transformer is loaded. Speed
optims run before placement/offload, per the diffusers composition order. status now
reports speed_mode + the optims actually engaged.
Verified on Z-Image (B200): default -> ['channels_last'], max -> ['channels_last',
'tf32'], compile correctly skipped for GGUF; generation works in every mode.
121 CPU tests pass.
Add a streamed 'group' offload tier (diffusers apply_group_offloading, block_level,
use_stream) that keeps the transformer flowing through the GPU a few blocks at a
time while the text encoder / VAE stay resident, and fix VAE tiling to drive the
VAE submodule (pipelines like Z-Image expose enable_tiling on pipe.vae, not the
pipeline). apply_memory_plan now returns the (policy, tiling) actually engaged so
status never overstates either, and group falls back to whole-module offload when
the transformer can't be streamed.
Measured on Z-Image (B200), all lossless (PSNR inf vs resident): balanced/group
cuts generation peak VRAM 32% (15951 -> 10840 MB) at near-resident speed (2.07 ->
2.99s); low_vram/model cuts it 48% (-> 8318 MB) but is slower (7.99s). Mode names
now match that tradeoff: balanced = stream the transformer, low_vram = offload
every component. auto picks group when the companions fit resident, else model.
112 CPU tests pass.
Add a lean, backend-agnostic memory policy that picks a CPU-offload policy and
VAE tiling/slicing from measured free device memory vs the model's estimated
resident footprint, then applies it to the built pipeline. auto stays resident
when the model fits (byte-identical to the prior resident path), and falls to
whole-module offload when tight; fast/balanced/low_vram are explicit overrides.
Sequential submodule offload is unreliable for GGUF transformers on diffusers
0.38, so it falls back to whole-module offload and status reports the policy
actually engaged.
Verified on Z-Image-Turbo Q4_K_M (B200): auto reproduces the resident image with
no VRAM/latency regression (PSNR inf); balanced/low_vram cut generation peak VRAM
47.9% (15951 -> 8318 MB) with byte-identical output, at the expected latency cost.
73 prior + 35 new CPU tests pass.
Phase 1 of porting the richer diffusion stack onto the image-generation backend.
- Add a compartmentalized device/dtype policy module (diffusion_device.py)
resolving CUDA/ROCm/XPU/MPS/CPU with capability flags. Keeps the NVIDIA
capability-based bf16 choice; ROCm and XPU are isolated; MPS uses bf16 or
fp32, never a silent fp16 that renders a black image.
- Add a per-family fp16_incompatible flag (Z-Image) and promote a resolved
float16 to float32 for those families so they do not produce black images.
- Split the backend locks: a generation holds only _generate_lock, so status,
unload, and a new load are never blocked by a long denoise. Add per-generation
cancellation via callback_on_step_end so an eviction or a superseding load
preempts a running generation; a replacement load waits for it to stop before
allocating, so two pipelines never sit in VRAM at once.
- Validate a load request before the GPU handoff so an unloadable pick never
evicts a working chat model, and reject missing local paths up front.
- Add CPU-only tests for the device policy, dtype guard, lock split and
cancellation, and validate-before-evict, plus a GPU benchmark/regression
script (scripts/diffusion_bench.py) measuring latency, peak VRAM, and PSNR
against a saved reference.
