elidedb-qbe / python /elidedb /context.py
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ElideDB query by example: no text, no model at query time
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"""Context retrieval: the ingest-side half.
WHY THIS EXISTS
---------------
`embeddings` holds one mean-pooled SigLIP vector per window. Mean pooling is
order-blind: reverse the frames and the vector is identical. So the index can
answer "is there a car and a person here" but never "is the person walking
*toward* the car" — appearance, not context. Reranking with a VLM fixes the
ranking but costs seconds per query, which is the wrong place to spend time in
a database.
The fix is the oldest trick a database has: precompute the expensive operator
into an index and make the query a lookup. Concretely,
ingest (once, offline) query (every time, hot)
------------------------ -----------------------
VLM reads 3 frames of the text -> SigLIP text vector
window and writes a
relational caption ONE matmul against ctx vectors
|
SigLIP text tower (no VLM in the loop, ever)
|
target vector -----------> train a small temporal tower to
predict it from cheap frame vectors
The VLM only ever labels a subset. The tower generalises the label to every
window, including windows ingested later, so a new day of footage costs a
forward pass over frame vectors instead of a day of VLM time. This is
pseudo-labelling in the sense of "Distilling Vision-Language Models on
Millions of Videos" (arXiv 2401.06129), applied at ingest instead of at
pretraining scale.
Three tables come out of this module, all ordinary Parquet:
frame_vectors ts, stream, vector[d] one row per FRAME
context_captions ts, t1, stream, caption, vector[d] teacher labels
context ts, t1, stream, vector[d] student output
"""
from __future__ import annotations
import re
import time
import numpy as np
import pyarrow as pa
import pyarrow.compute as pc
from .embeddings import (DEFAULT_MODEL, MODELS, _embed_images,
_load_model, resolve_model)
# The teacher is asked for RELATIONS and CHANGE, not for a list of objects.
# An object list is exactly what SigLIP already encodes, so a caption that
# reads "a car, a road, a building" teaches the student nothing it does not
# already know. Everything interesting is in the verbs.
CAPTION_PROMPT = (
"These frames are in time order from one short video clip. "
"Reply with ONE sentence of at most 25 words describing what is "
"happening: who or what is present, what each is doing, how they are "
"positioned relative to each other, and how the scene moves or changes. "
"Be concrete and literal. Do not say 'frame', 'image', or 'video'."
)
# The caption is the index. If it does not use the words a user would use, the
# lexical ranker can never fire and the caption-LSA space is built around the
# wrong distinctions. Measured on BridgeData2: the generic prompt above
# produced "a robot arm interacts with a wooden box", while the human label
# for the same clip was "put red object in the drawer" — different noun,
# different granularity, no overlap for retrieval to work with.
#
# So the prompt is a per-domain parameter. This one asks for the ACTION and
# the OBJECT MOVED, which is how manipulation data is described. It stays
# deliberately generic: it never names objects that appear in the labels
# (that would be leaking the eval set into the index), only the SHAPE of the
# description — what moved, and where it ended up.
# The caption IS the index: whatever verbs the prompt teaches are the only
# verbs lexical recall can ever match. The first version of this prompt said
# "which object the arm picks up or moves, and where it puts it" — and the
# resulting 2,348 captions contained picks x2371, puts x1673 and ZERO
# instances of close/open/wipe/push, so "close the drawer" was unfindable by
# construction. The prompt must be VERB-OPEN: describe the action in its own
# words, and always report state changes.
# S0 VIOLATION, FIXED. The previous MANIPULATION_PROMPT enumerated the
# task vocabulary - "picking up, putting, opening, closing, pushing,
# pouring, wiping, pressing" - and this file's own comment stated the
# consequence: "The caption IS the index: whatever verbs the prompt
# teaches are the only verbs lexical recall can ever match." A verb
# outside that list was unfindable by construction, and a non-
# manipulation corpus was unfindable entirely.
#
# It was also TUNED AGAINST THE EVAL LABELS. The removed comment
# recorded the generic prompt producing "a robot arm interacts with a
# wooden box" where "the human label for the same clip was 'put red
# object in the drawer'", and the prompt being rewritten to close that
# gap. bridge_ingest.py deliberately keeps the task strings out of the
# store; this prompt let them back in through the side door.
#
# The replacement names no verb, no object class and no domain. It asks
# for what MOVED and what CHANGED, which is answerable for a kitchen, a
# road, a warehouse or a surgical table, and lets the corpus supply its
# own words.
MANIPULATION_PROMPT = (
"These frames are in time order from one short clip. "
"Reply with ONE short sentence in plain English: what moved, what it "
"did, and what was different at the end. Use whatever words fit; do "
"not choose from a list. If anything changed state, say so. "
"Do not say 'frame', 'image', or 'video'."
)
PROMPTS = {"scene": CAPTION_PROMPT, "manipulation": MANIPULATION_PROMPT}
# SigLIP's text tower truncates at 64 tokens, so a rambling caption is
# silently cut mid-clause and the tail is lost anyway. Trim deliberately
# instead: drop the VLM's framing preamble, keep whole sentences.
#
# The preamble pattern is deliberately narrow — a leading PREPOSITIONAL
# phrase only ("In the first frame,", "Across this sequence,"). An earlier
# looser version also matched "The video shows a street with cars," and
# amputated the subject, leaving captions that began "and various buildings".
# Requiring a leading preposition and at most two filler words makes that
# impossible.
_PREAMBLE = re.compile(
r"^(?:in|across|throughout|over|during)\s+(?:the|this|these)\s+"
r"(?:[\w-]+\s+){0,2}?(?:frames?|images?|pictures?|sequence|clip|video)\s*,\s*",
re.I)
# Prompt-echo: asking for "the action verb in plain English" made the VLM
# write 'The action verb is "picking up" as the arm picks up...' — meta-
# language that pollutes the lexical index. Strip the frame, keep the deed.
_VERB_ECHO = re.compile(
r"^the action(?:\s+verb)?\s+is\s+['\"]?[\w-]+(?:\s+[\w-]+){0,2}?"
r"['\"]?[,.]?\s+(?:as|because|where|since|:)\s+", re.I)
def tidy_caption(text: str, max_words: int = 32) -> str:
t = " ".join(text.strip().split())
t = _PREAMBLE.sub("", t)
t = _VERB_ECHO.sub("", t)
parts = re.split(r"(?<=[.!?])\s+", t)
# A generation cut off at max_tokens ends mid-clause. Keep only sentences
# that actually terminate, unless that would leave nothing at all.
whole = [p for p in parts if p.rstrip().endswith((".", "!", "?"))]
parts = whole or parts[:1]
out = []
for p in parts:
if out and len(" ".join(out + [p]).split()) > max_words:
break
out.append(p)
t = " ".join(out).strip()
return (t[:1].upper() + t[1:]) if t else " ".join(text.split())[:200]
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# 1. Per-frame vectors — the sequence a temporal model needs
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
def embed_frames(store, frame_table="frames", model=None, width=512,
batch=32, incremental=True, verbose=True, stride=1,
streams=None, engine="siglip"):
"""One SigLIP vector per frame → `frame_vectors`.
Deliberately NOT pooled. Pooling is the student's job, and pooling here
would throw away the only signal that distinguishes context from
appearance. Decode goes through the same byte-range path queries use, so
this costs the frames it reads and nothing else.
"""
from PIL import Image
from .video import FrameSet
# engine="fdnnv": the distilled streaming encoder — every frame, no
# stride, state carried per stream. Same output space as the teacher, so
# everything downstream (pooling, search, context) is unchanged.
if engine == "fdnnv":
return _embed_frames_fdnnv(store, frame_table, incremental, verbose,
streams)
model = resolve_model(model)
frames = store.table(frame_table).scan()
allst = sorted(set(frames.column("stream").to_pylist()))
streams = [s for s in allst if s in streams] if streams else allst
done = {}
if incremental:
try:
prev = store.table("frame_vectors").scan()
for s_, t_ in zip(prev.column("stream").to_pylist(),
prev.column("ts").to_pylist()):
done[s_] = max(done.get(s_, -1), t_)
except Exception:
pass
t_start = time.time()
rows_ts, rows_stream, rows_vec = [], [], []
for s in streams:
sel = frames.filter(pc.equal(frames.column("stream"), s))
if s in done:
sel = sel.filter(pc.greater(sel.column("ts"), done[s]))
if len(sel) == 0:
continue
# `stride` subsamples the frame index before decoding. A 5 Hz robot
# camera does not need every frame embedded for a 4 s window to be
# well described, and the cost here is linear in frames decoded, so
# this is the dial between ingest time and temporal resolution.
decoded = FrameSet(store, frame_table, sel).decode(width=width,
stride=stride)
if verbose:
print(f" {s}: {len(decoded)} frames decoded", flush=True)
for i in range(0, len(decoded), batch):
chunk = decoded[i:i + batch]
vecs = _embed_images([Image.fromarray(a) for _, a in chunk], model)
for (ts, _), v in zip(chunk, vecs):
rows_ts.append(int(ts))
rows_stream.append(s)
rows_vec.append(v)
if not rows_ts:
return {"frames": 0, "note": "nothing new (incremental)"}
dim = len(rows_vec[0])
tbl = pa.table({
"ts": pa.array(rows_ts, pa.int64()),
"stream": pa.array(rows_stream),
"vector": pa.array([v.tolist() for v in rows_vec],
pa.list_(pa.float32(), dim)),
})
version = store.table("frame_vectors").append(
tbl, kind="embeddings",
meta={"model": model, "dim": dim, "decode_width": width,
"source_table": frame_table})
return {"frames": len(tbl), "dim": dim, "version": version,
"seconds": round(time.time() - t_start, 1)}
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# 2. Window plan — shared by teacher and student so labels line up exactly
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
def plan_windows(store, window_s=2.0, stride_s=0.5, table="frame_vectors",
min_frames=4):
"""Sliding windows over each stream's timeline.
Stride < window on purpose: overlapping windows are how a *sliding* index
avoids the boundary problem where an event straddles two tumbling windows
and lands strongly in neither. Merging overlaps back into one answer is
already handled downstream by the segment merger.
"""
fv = store.table(table).scan()
win = int(window_s * 1e9)
stride = int(stride_s * 1e9)
out = []
for s in sorted(set(fv.column("stream").to_pylist())):
rows = fv.filter(pc.equal(fv.column("stream"), s))
ts = np.sort(rows.column("ts").to_numpy())
if len(ts) == 0:
continue
t = int(ts[0])
end = int(ts[-1])
while t <= end - win // 2:
lo, hi = np.searchsorted(ts, [t, t + win])
if hi - lo >= min_frames:
out.append((s, t, t + win - 1))
t += stride
return out
def window_sequences(store, windows, table="frame_vectors", max_len=32):
"""(stream, t0, t1) → (T, d) float32 stack of that window's frame vectors.
Subsampled to `max_len` evenly. A 2 s window at 16 Hz is 32 frames; the
cap keeps the tower's cost independent of frame rate, which is what makes
the same model valid across a 10 Hz LiDAR-synced camera and a 60 Hz one.
"""
fv = store.table(table).scan()
by_stream = {}
for s in sorted(set(fv.column("stream").to_pylist())):
rows = fv.filter(pc.equal(fv.column("stream"), s))
ts = rows.column("ts").to_numpy()
order = np.argsort(ts)
vecs = np.asarray(rows.column("vector").to_pylist(), dtype=np.float32)
by_stream[s] = (ts[order], vecs[order])
seqs = []
for (s, t0, t1) in windows:
ts, vecs = by_stream[s]
lo, hi = np.searchsorted(ts, [t0, t1 + 1])
idx = np.arange(lo, hi)
if len(idx) > max_len:
idx = idx[np.linspace(0, len(idx) - 1, max_len).round().astype(int)]
seqs.append(vecs[idx])
return seqs
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# 3. The teacher — a VLM that actually reads the pixels, run ONCE per window
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
def caption_windows(store, windows, frames_per_window=3, model_id=None,
max_tokens=64, width=448, verbose=True, limit=None,
every=1, prompt="scene"):
"""VLM captions for `windows` → `context_captions` table.
The VLM is shown several frames of the SAME window in order, so the
caption can describe motion. A single-frame caption would be another
appearance label and the student would learn nothing a mean-pool cannot
already produce.
"""
import tempfile
from pathlib import Path
from PIL import Image
from .rerank import DEFAULT_VLM, _load
from .video import FrameSet
model_id = model_id or DEFAULT_VLM
from mlx_vlm import generate
from mlx_vlm.prompt_utils import apply_chat_template
vlm, processor, cfg, _, _ = _load(model_id)
rot = store.meta.get("display", {}).get("rotate", 0)
frames = store.table("frames").scan()
tmpdir = Path(tempfile.mkdtemp(prefix="elidedb_ctx_"))
# `every` samples the window list uniformly instead of taking a prefix.
# On a corpus too large to caption in full this matters: a prefix would
# confine the caption vocabulary to whatever happens early in the
# timeline, so query terms for anything later would be out of vocabulary
# and the lexical ranker would abstain on the entire tail.
if every > 1:
windows = windows[::every]
if limit:
windows = windows[:limit]
text = PROMPTS.get(prompt, prompt) # preset name or raw prompt
prompt = apply_chat_template(processor, cfg, text,
num_images=frames_per_window)
recs = {"ts": [], "t1": [], "stream": [], "caption": []}
t_start = time.time()
for n, (s, t0, t1) in enumerate(windows):
sel = frames.filter(pc.and_(
pc.equal(frames.column("stream"), s),
pc.and_(pc.greater_equal(frames.column("ts"), t0),
pc.less_equal(frames.column("ts"), t1))))
fs = FrameSet(store, "frames", sel)
dec = fs.decode(width=width)
if len(dec) < 1:
continue
picks = np.linspace(0, len(dec) - 1,
min(frames_per_window, len(dec))).round().astype(int)
paths = []
for j, p in enumerate(picks):
im = Image.fromarray(dec[p][1])
if rot:
im = im.rotate(rot, expand=True)
fp = tmpdir / f"w{n}_{j}.jpg"
im.save(fp, "JPEG", quality=85)
paths.append(str(fp))
while len(paths) < frames_per_window: # pad short windows
paths.append(paths[-1])
r = generate(vlm, processor, prompt, image=paths,
max_tokens=max_tokens, verbose=False)
cap = tidy_caption(r.text if hasattr(r, "text") else str(r))
recs["ts"].append(t0)
recs["t1"].append(t1)
recs["stream"].append(s)
recs["caption"].append(cap)
if verbose and n % 10 == 0:
el = time.time() - t_start
print(f" [{n + 1}/{len(windows)}] {el:.0f}s {s} +"
f"{(t0 - int(frames.column('ts')[0].as_py())) / 1e9:.1f}s :: "
f"{cap[:90]}", flush=True)
if not recs["ts"]:
return {"captions": 0}
# Caption → frozen SigLIP TEXT tower. This is the whole point of using
# SigLIP as the teacher's codec: the target lands in the SAME space a
# user's query lands in, so the student is learning to be the image side
# of a dual encoder — not to regress an arbitrary embedding.
vecs = embed_texts(recs["caption"])
dim = vecs.shape[1]
tbl = pa.table({
"ts": pa.array(recs["ts"], pa.int64()),
"t1": pa.array(recs["t1"], pa.int64()),
"stream": pa.array(recs["stream"]),
"caption": pa.array(recs["caption"]),
"vector": pa.array([v.tolist() for v in vecs],
pa.list_(pa.float32(), dim)),
})
version = store.table("context_captions").append(
tbl, kind="embeddings",
meta={"teacher": model_id, "text_model": DEFAULT_MODEL, "dim": dim,
"frames_per_window": frames_per_window, "prompt": text[:200],
"seconds": round(time.time() - t_start, 1)})
return {"captions": len(tbl), "version": version,
"seconds": round(time.time() - t_start, 1)}
def embed_texts(texts, model_id=DEFAULT_MODEL, batch=32):
"""Batched SigLIP text tower. Same normalisation as image vectors so the
two are directly comparable by dot product. Delegates to the
portable single-text path when mlx is not on this machine."""
from .embeddings import _backend, embed_text
if _backend() != "mlx":
return np.stack([embed_text(t if t.strip() else "a scene",
model_id) for t in texts])
import mlx.core as mx
model, processor = _load_model(model_id)
out = []
for i in range(0, len(texts), batch):
chunk = [t if t.strip() else "a scene" for t in texts[i:i + batch]]
ti = processor(text=chunk, padding="max_length", max_length=64,
truncation=True, return_tensors="np")
v = np.array(model.get_text_features(mx.array(ti["input_ids"])),
dtype=np.float32)
out.append(v / np.linalg.norm(v, axis=1, keepdims=True))
return np.concatenate(out, axis=0)
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# 4. CaptionSpace — the output space, chosen by measurement
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Three candidate spaces were benchmarked against a VLM judge on windows the
# tower never trained on (mean yes/no logprob margin over each method's top-5,
# six relational queries, higher is better):
#
# appearance only (SigLIP image-text) +0.276
# caption EMBEDDING (SigLIP text tower, oracle) +0.218 <- worse
# VLM rerank at query time (2.1 s/query) +0.314
# caption TEXT, LSA-48 +0.339 <- winner
# caption TEXT, raw TF-IDF, fused with appearance +0.345
#
# The embedding route loses because SigLIP's text tower is trained to sit
# near IMAGES, not near other text; comparing a query embedding to a caption
# embedding uses a geometry the model was never optimised for. Matching the
# caption as TEXT sidesteps that entirely.
#
# LSA-48 is chosen over raw TF-IDF despite scoring 0.006 lower: it is dense
# and fixed-width, so (a) it is a target a small tower can actually regress,
# which is what lets unlabelled windows get a context vector at all, and
# (b) it is one more fixed_size_list column, so every index already in the
# store consumes it unchanged.
class CaptionSpace:
"""TF-IDF + LSA over the caption corpus. Queries and captions share it.
Not persisted as a pickle. The captions themselves are the durable
artifact — they live in `context_captions` as ordinary Parquet — and the
lexical index is refit from them on load (a few ms for this corpus) and
cached. That keeps the index unconditionally consistent with the data and
free of any sklearn version pinning. At corpus sizes where refitting
stops being free, persist the vocabulary and the SVD basis; the interface
does not change.
"""
def __init__(self, vec, svd):
self.vec, self.svd = vec, svd
self.dim = svd.n_components
@staticmethod
def fit(texts, dim=48):
from sklearn.decomposition import TruncatedSVD
from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import TfidfVectorizer
vec = TfidfVectorizer(stop_words="english", ngram_range=(1, 2),
sublinear_tf=True).fit(texts)
X = vec.transform(texts)
dim = int(min(dim, X.shape[1] - 1, len(texts) - 1))
svd = TruncatedSVD(n_components=dim, random_state=0).fit(X)
return CaptionSpace(vec, svd)
def transform(self, texts):
v = self.svd.transform(self.vec.transform(list(texts)))
v = np.asarray(v, dtype=np.float32)
return v / (np.linalg.norm(v, axis=1, keepdims=True) + 1e-8)
_SPACE_CACHE: dict = {}
def caption_space(store, dim=48):
t = store.table("context_captions")
key = (str(store.dir), t.state().version, dim)
if key not in _SPACE_CACHE:
_SPACE_CACHE.clear()
_SPACE_CACHE[key] = CaptionSpace.fit(
t.scan().column("caption").to_pylist(), dim=dim)
return _SPACE_CACHE[key]
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# 5. The student — train the tower, then materialise context vectors
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
def _labelled(store, windows):
"""Join the caption table onto the window plan by (stream, ts)."""
caps = store.table("context_captions").scan()
key = {(s, t): i for i, (s, t) in enumerate(
zip(caps.column("stream").to_pylist(), caps.column("ts").to_pylist()))}
vecs = np.asarray(caps.column("vector").to_pylist(), dtype=np.float32)
texts = caps.column("caption").to_pylist()
keep, tv, tt = [], [], []
for w in windows:
i = key.get((w[0], w[1]))
if i is not None:
keep.append(w)
tv.append(vecs[i])
tt.append(texts[i])
return keep, np.asarray(tv, dtype=np.float32), tt
def train_context(store, window_s=2.0, stride_s=0.5, val_frac=0.3,
d_in=48, d_out=48, epochs=400, cfg=None, verbose=True,
seed=0):
"""Fit the input PCA + tower to predict caption-LSA coordinates.
The validation split is by TIME, never at random: windows slide with 75%
overlap, so a random split puts near-duplicate windows on both sides and
reports a score that measures nothing.
"""
from .ctxtower import ContextCodec, retrieval_r1, save_tower, train_tower
windows = plan_windows(store, window_s, stride_s)
windows, _, cap_text = _labelled(store, windows)
if len(windows) < 16:
raise RuntimeError(f"only {len(windows)} captioned windows — run "
"caption_windows() first")
fv = store.table("frame_vectors").scan()
frame_mat = np.asarray(fv.column("vector").to_pylist(), dtype=np.float32)
codec = ContextCodec.fit(frame_mat, d_in=d_in)
space = caption_space(store, dim=d_out)
seqs = [codec.encode(s) for s in window_sequences(store, windows)]
targets = space.transform(cap_text)
t0s = np.array([w[1] for w in windows])
cut = np.quantile(t0s, 1.0 - val_frac)
val_idx = np.where(t0s >= cut)[0]
if verbose:
print(f" {len(windows)} labelled windows | train "
f"{len(windows) - len(val_idx)} | val {len(val_idx)} "
f"(time split at +{(cut - t0s.min()) / 1e9:.1f}s) | "
f"target dim {space.dim}", flush=True)
cfg = {**dict(d_in=codec.P_in.shape[0], d_out=space.dim), **(cfg or {})}
model, info = train_tower(seqs, targets, windows, val_idx, cfg=cfg,
epochs=epochs, verbose=verbose, seed=seed)
import mlx.core as mx
val = np.zeros(len(seqs), bool)
val[val_idx] = True
Xva = _pad_stack([s for s, m in zip(seqs, val) if m])
pred = np.array(model(mx.array(Xva)))
pred /= np.linalg.norm(pred, axis=1, keepdims=True) + 1e-8
tgt_va = targets[val]
# Baseline: predict the TRAIN-set mean target for every window. That is
# the best a model can do while knowing nothing about the specific window,
# so any lift over it is genuine per-window information and not the corpus
# prior leaking through.
prior = targets[~val].mean(axis=0)
prior /= np.linalg.norm(prior) + 1e-8
prior = np.repeat(prior[None, :], len(tgt_va), axis=0)
metrics = {
"labelled_windows": len(windows),
"train": int((~val).sum()), "val": int(val.sum()),
"target_dim": space.dim,
"val_R@1_tower": retrieval_r1(pred, tgt_va),
"val_cos_tower": float((pred * tgt_va).sum(1).mean()),
"val_cos_prior": float((prior * tgt_va).sum(1).mean()),
"params": int(sum(v.size for v in _flat(model).values())),
**{k: v for k, v in info.items() if k != "history"},
}
save_tower(model, codec,
{"window_s": window_s, "stride_s": stride_s, "d_out": space.dim,
"metrics": metrics, "history": info["history"]},
store.dir / "models" / "context")
return model, codec, metrics
def _flat(model):
from mlx.utils import tree_flatten
return {k: np.array(v) for k, v in tree_flatten(model.parameters())}
def _pad_stack(seqs):
T = max(s.shape[0] for s in seqs)
X = np.zeros((len(seqs), T, seqs[0].shape[1]), dtype=np.float32)
for i, s in enumerate(seqs):
X[i, :len(s)] = s
if len(s) < T:
X[i, len(s):] = s[-1]
return X
def build_context(store, window_s=None, stride_s=None, batch=64, verbose=True):
"""Materialise the `context` table: one context vector per window.
Where a window has a teacher caption, its EXACT caption-LSA vector is
stored. Where it does not, the tower's prediction is stored and the row is
flagged `estimated`. This is the ordinary database distinction between a
materialised value and an estimated one, and it is the point of having a
student at all: the VLM labels what you can afford, the tower covers the
rest, and the query does not care which it got.
"""
import time
import mlx.core as mx
from .ctxtower import load_tower
model, codec, meta = load_tower(store.dir / "models" / "context")
window_s = window_s or meta.get("window_s", 2.0)
stride_s = stride_s or meta.get("stride_s", 0.5)
space = caption_space(store, dim=meta.get("d_out", 48))
windows = plan_windows(store, window_s, stride_s)
raw = window_sequences(store, windows)
seqs = [codec.encode(s) for s in raw]
# The mean-pooled appearance vector for the SAME window, stored alongside.
# Fusing appearance with context otherwise needs a join between two tables
# built on different window plans; keeping both columns in one row makes
# the fused query two matmuls over one Parquet scan and no join at all.
appear = np.stack([s.mean(axis=0) for s in raw])
appear /= np.linalg.norm(appear, axis=1, keepdims=True) + 1e-8
t_start = time.time()
out = []
for i in range(0, len(seqs), batch):
out.append(np.array(model(mx.array(_pad_stack(seqs[i:i + batch])))))
z = np.concatenate(out, axis=0)
z /= np.linalg.norm(z, axis=1, keepdims=True) + 1e-8
infer_s = time.time() - t_start
caps = store.table("context_captions").scan()
known = {(a, b): c for a, b, c in zip(caps.column("stream").to_pylist(),
caps.column("ts").to_pylist(),
caps.column("caption").to_pylist())}
have = [(i, known[(w[0], w[1])]) for i, w in enumerate(windows)
if (w[0], w[1]) in known]
estimated = np.ones(len(windows), bool)
if have:
exact = space.transform([c for _, c in have])
for (i, _), v in zip(have, exact):
z[i] = v
estimated[i] = False
dim, adim = z.shape[1], appear.shape[1]
tbl = pa.table({
"ts": pa.array([w[1] for w in windows], pa.int64()),
"t1": pa.array([w[2] for w in windows], pa.int64()),
"stream": pa.array([w[0] for w in windows]),
"vector": pa.array([v.tolist() for v in z],
pa.list_(pa.float32(), dim)),
"appearance": pa.array([v.tolist() for v in appear],
pa.list_(pa.float32(), adim)),
"estimated": pa.array(estimated.tolist(), pa.bool_()),
})
st = store.table("context").state()
meta_out = {"dim": dim, "window_s": window_s, "stride_s": stride_s,
"estimated_rows": int(estimated.sum()),
"exact_rows": int((~estimated).sum())}
if st.files: # replace: one atomic commit
import uuid as _uuid
from .log import FileEntry
from .store import write_parquet
fname = f"part-{_uuid.uuid4().hex[:12]}.parquet"
p = store.dir / "tables" / "context" / fname
tbl = tbl.take(pc.sort_indices(tbl.column("ts")))
write_parquet(tbl, p)
tsv = tbl.column("ts").to_numpy()
version = store.table("context").log.commit(
op="replace", kind="embeddings", schema=str(tbl.schema),
add=[FileEntry(fname, len(tbl), p.stat().st_size,
int(tsv.min()), int(tsv.max()))],
remove=[f.path for f in st.files], meta=meta_out)
else:
version = store.table("context").append(tbl, kind="embeddings",
meta=meta_out)
if verbose:
print(f" {len(tbl)} context vectors ({int((~estimated).sum())} exact, "
f"{int(estimated.sum())} estimated) | tower inference "
f"{infer_s * 1000:.0f} ms "
f"({infer_s / len(tbl) * 1e6:.0f} us/window)")
return {"windows": len(tbl), "dim": dim, "version": version,
"inference_s": round(infer_s, 3),
"us_per_window": round(infer_s / len(tbl) * 1e6, 1), **meta_out}
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# 6. Post-training cellular turnover — capacity the data cannot support is
# both latency and overfitting, so apoptosis pays twice.
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
def _prepare(store, window_s, stride_s, codec, val_frac, d_out):
windows, _, texts = _labelled(store, plan_windows(store, window_s,
stride_s))
seqs = [codec.encode(s) for s in window_sequences(store, windows)]
targets = caption_space(store, dim=d_out).transform(texts)
t0s = np.array([w[1] for w in windows])
val = t0s >= np.quantile(t0s, 1.0 - val_frac)
return windows, seqs, targets, val
def prune_context(store, val_frac=0.3, ppo_iters=40, sparsity_coef=0.15,
finetune_epochs=300, rebirth_fraction=0.5,
select_tolerance=0.03, verbose=True, seed=0):
"""apoptosis → re-settle → neurogenesis → re-settle, then COMPACT so the
surviving channels are the only ones that cost anything."""
import time
import mlx.core as mx
import mlx.nn as nn
from .ctxprune import compact, get_channel_mask, run_pruning_cycle
from .ctxtower import (load_tower, overlap_mask, retrieval_r1,
save_tower, siglip_loss)
model, codec, meta = load_tower(store.dir / "models" / "context")
windows, seqs, targets, val = _prepare(
store, meta["window_s"], meta["stride_s"], codec, val_frac,
meta.get("d_out", 48))
Xtr = mx.array(_pad_stack([s for s, m in zip(seqs, ~val) if m]))
Xva = mx.array(_pad_stack([s for s, m in zip(seqs, val) if m]))
Ytr, Yva = mx.array(targets[~val]), mx.array(targets[val])
ig_tr = mx.array(overlap_mask([w for w, m in zip(windows, ~val) if m]))
ig_va = mx.array(overlap_mask([w for w, m in zip(windows, val) if m]))
log_t = mx.array(np.float32(meta["metrics"]["log_t"]))
bias = mx.array(np.float32(meta["metrics"]["bias"]))
def _norm(a):
return a * mx.rsqrt(mx.sum(a * a, axis=-1, keepdims=True) + 1e-8)
def _loss(m, x, y, ig):
v = _norm(m(x))
u = _norm(y)
return siglip_loss(v, u, ignore=ig, log_t=log_t, bias=bias) \
+ 0.3 * mx.mean(1.0 - mx.sum(v * u, axis=-1))
def loss_of(m):
"""The number PPO is scored against: VALIDATION retrieval loss. Using
train loss here would reward a policy for keeping memorisers."""
m.set_training(False)
return float(_loss(m, Xva, Yva, ig_va).item())
lg = nn.value_and_grad(model, lambda m: _loss(m, Xtr, Ytr, ig_tr))
def r1(m):
m.set_training(False)
return retrieval_r1(np.array(_norm(m(Xva))), np.array(_norm(Yva)))
def latency(m, reps=20):
m.set_training(False)
mx.eval(m(Xva))
t = time.perf_counter()
for _ in range(reps):
mx.eval(m(Xva))
return (time.perf_counter() - t) / reps / Xva.shape[0] * 1e6
before = {"channels": int(get_channel_mask(model).sum()),
"val_loss": loss_of(model), "val_R@1": r1(model),
"us_per_window": latency(model),
"params": int(sum(v.size for v in _flat(model).values()))}
rec = run_pruning_cycle(model, np.array(Xtr), loss_of, lg,
ppo_iters=ppo_iters, sparsity_coef=sparsity_coef,
finetune_epochs=finetune_epochs,
rebirth_fraction=rebirth_fraction,
select_tolerance=select_tolerance, seed=seed,
verbose=verbose)
# Compaction must be a no-op numerically — it only deletes channels the
# mask already zeroed. Measure both sides and say so if they disagree,
# rather than quietly shipping a tower that differs from the one the
# search selected.
restored = loss_of(model)
model, kept = compact(model)
after = {"channels": int(len(kept)), "val_loss": loss_of(model),
"loss_before_compaction": restored, "val_R@1": r1(model),
"us_per_window": latency(model),
"params": int(sum(v.size for v in _flat(model).values()))}
rec["before"], rec["after"] = before, after
drift = abs(after["val_loss"] - restored)
if drift > 1e-3:
print(f" WARNING: compaction changed val loss by {drift:.4f} "
f"({restored:.4f} -> {after['val_loss']:.4f}) — expected ~0")
if verbose:
print(f"\n channels {before['channels']} -> {after['channels']} | "
f"params {before['params']:,} -> {after['params']:,} | "
f"{before['us_per_window']:.1f} -> {after['us_per_window']:.1f} "
f"us/window | val loss {before['val_loss']:.4f} -> "
f"{after['val_loss']:.4f}")
save_tower(model, codec,
{**{k: v for k, v in meta.items() if k != "history"},
"pruned": {"before": before, "after": after,
"ppo_history": rec.get("ppo_history"),
"keep_probs": rec.get("keep_probs"),
"reverse_attention": rec.get("reverse_attention"),
"selected": rec.get("selected"),
"stages": [{k: v for k, v in s.items()
if k != "mask"} for s in rec["stages"]]}},
store.dir / "models" / "context")
return model, rec
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# 7. The query path — two matmuls, no VLM, no decode
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CTX_CACHE: dict = {}
def _ctx_matrix(store):
t = store.table("context")
key = (str(store.dir), t.state().version)
if key not in _CTX_CACHE:
_CTX_CACHE[key] = np.stack([
np.asarray(v, dtype=np.float32)
for v in t.scan().column("vector").to_pylist()])
return _CTX_CACHE[key]
def _lexical(store):
"""(vectorizer, matrix, has_caption) aligned to the `context` table rows.
Windows the VLM never captioned have no text, so they are marked as
abstentions rather than as empty documents — an empty document would score
0 on every query and be ranked last by the lexical ranker, which is a veto
dressed up as evidence.
"""
t = store.table("context")
key = (str(store.dir), t.state().version, "lex")
if key in _CTX_CACHE:
return _CTX_CACHE[key]
ctx = t.scan()
rows = list(zip(ctx.column("stream").to_pylist(),
ctx.column("ts").to_pylist()))
caps = store.table("context_captions").scan()
known = dict(zip(zip(caps.column("stream").to_pylist(),
caps.column("ts").to_pylist()),
caps.column("caption").to_pylist()))
texts = [known.get(r, "") for r in rows]
has = np.array([bool(x) for x in texts])
space = caption_space(store)
X = space.vec.transform(texts)
nrm = np.sqrt(np.asarray(X.multiply(X).sum(1))).ravel() + 1e-8
_CTX_CACHE[key] = (space, X, nrm, has)
return _CTX_CACHE[key]
DEFAULT_WEIGHTS = {"appearance": 1.0, "context": 1.0, "lexical": 1.0}
def search(store, text, k=10, merge=True, t0=None, t1=None, streams=None,
weights=None, rrf_k=60.0, neg_weight=0.5, min_score=None,
percentile=None, rerank=False, rerank_top=12, rerank_alpha=0.7,
explain_top=0):
"""Hybrid contextual search: three rankers fused by reciprocal rank.
appearance SigLIP image-text cosine over the window's frames.
Knows what OBJECTS are present. Order-blind.
context caption-LSA cosine. Knows what is HAPPENING, because the
caption was written by a VLM that watched three frames.
lexical TF-IDF over the caption text. Exact term evidence — the
ranker that actually knows what "red" means.
Fusing by RRF rather than by a weighted score sum is the fix for
"crossing red car" returning any clip of someone crossing: RRF rewards
agreement across rankers, so a candidate that satisfies one strong signal
alone can no longer win. See elidedb.fusion.
`rerank=True` adds a final VLM pass over the top `rerank_top` — the
expensive operator, last, on an already-pruned set.
"""
from .embeddings import _parse_query, _score_windows, embed_text
from .fusion import explain_fusion, rrf
# Fail with a sentence, not a KeyError from three frames down. An empty
# table has no schema, so the first column access explodes with
# 'Field "t1" does not exist' — true, useless, and it names the wrong
# problem.
if not store.table("context").state().files:
raise RuntimeError(
f"store '{store.name}' has no context index. Build it with "
"store.index_context() (frames -> per-frame vectors -> VLM "
"captions -> context table), or use store.search_text() for "
"appearance-only search.")
pos, neg = _parse_query(text)
ctx_tbl = store.table("context").scan()
all_t0 = ctx_tbl.column("ts").to_numpy()
all_t1 = ctx_tbl.column("t1").to_numpy()
all_s = ctx_tbl.column("stream").to_numpy(zero_copy_only=False)
# hybrid retrieval: time and stream predicates are pushed INTO candidate
# selection, not applied to a global top-k afterwards
pred = np.ones(len(all_t0), bool)
if t0 is not None:
pred &= all_t1 >= t0
if t1 is not None:
pred &= all_t0 <= t1
if streams:
pred &= np.isin(all_s, list(streams))
idx = np.where(pred)[0]
if len(idx) == 0:
return [], {"index": "context", "total": len(all_t0), "scanned": 0,
"segments": 0}
APP = _appearance_matrix(store)
CTX = _ctx_matrix(store)
space, X, nrm, has_cap = _lexical(store)
pos_app = np.stack([embed_text(p) for p in pos])
neg_app = np.stack([embed_text(n) for n in neg]) if neg else None
app = _score_windows(APP, idx, pos_app, neg_app, neg_weight)
q_join = " ".join(pos)
ctx_sc = CTX[idx] @ space.transform([q_join])[0]
qv = space.vec.transform([q_join])
lex = np.asarray((X[idx] @ qv.T).todense()).ravel() / nrm[idx]
lex = np.where(has_cap[idx], lex, np.nan) # abstain, do not veto
rankings = {"appearance": app, "context": ctx_sc, "lexical": lex}
w = {**DEFAULT_WEIGHTS, **(weights or {})}
scores = rrf(rankings, w, rrf_k)
stats = {"index": "context", "total": len(all_t0), "scanned": len(idx),
"method": "rrf", "rrf_k": rrf_k, "weights": w,
"predicate_candidates": int(pred.sum()),
"captioned_candidates": int(has_cap[idx].sum()),
"positive_terms": pos, "negative_terms": neg}
if explain_top:
stats["why"] = explain_fusion(rankings, w, rrf_k, top=explain_top)
keep = np.ones(len(idx), bool)
if percentile is not None:
keep &= scores >= np.percentile(scores, percentile)
if min_score is not None:
keep &= scores >= min_score
idx, scores = idx[keep], scores[keep]
stats["after_floor"] = int(len(idx))
hits = _segments(idx, scores, all_s, all_t0, all_t1, k, merge, stats)
if rerank and hits:
from .rerank import rerank_hits
hits, info = rerank_hits(store, hits, text, top_n=rerank_top,
alpha=rerank_alpha)
stats["rerank"] = info
return hits, stats
def _segments(idx, scores, all_s, all_t0, all_t1, k, merge, stats):
"""Merge qualifying windows into maximal runs per stream.
Fixed windows are an INDEXING granularity, not an answer granularity: a
20 s event should come back as one 20 s hit, and a query matching only 2 s
of it should come back as that 2 s.
"""
streams_sel, w_t0, w_t1 = all_s[idx], all_t0[idx], all_t1[idx]
if len(idx) == 0:
stats["segments"] = 0
return []
if not merge:
order = np.argsort(scores)[::-1][:k]
return [{"stream": str(streams_sel[i]), "t0": int(w_t0[i]),
"t1": int(w_t1[i]), "score": float(scores[i]),
"windows": 1} for i in order]
med, top = float(np.median(scores)), float(scores.max())
thr = med + 0.55 * (top - med)
stats["threshold"] = round(thr, 6)
qual = np.where(scores >= thr)[0]
order = np.lexsort((w_t0[qual], streams_sel[qual]))
qual = qual[order]
gap = int(np.median(w_t1[qual] - w_t0[qual])) + 1 if len(qual) else 0
segs = []
for i in qual:
s_, a, b, sc = (str(streams_sel[i]), int(w_t0[i]), int(w_t1[i]),
float(scores[i]))
last = segs[-1] if segs else None
if last and last["stream"] == s_ and a - last["t1"] <= gap:
last["t1"] = max(last["t1"], b)
last["score"] = max(last["score"], sc)
last["mean"] = (last["mean"] * last["windows"] + sc) / (last["windows"] + 1)
last["windows"] += 1
else:
segs.append({"stream": s_, "t0": a, "t1": b, "score": sc,
"mean": sc, "windows": 1})
segs.sort(key=lambda g: -g["score"])
stats["qualifying_windows"] = len(qual)
stats["segments"] = len(segs)
return segs[:k]
def _appearance_matrix(store):
t = store.table("context")
key = (str(store.dir), t.state().version, "app")
if key not in _CTX_CACHE:
_CTX_CACHE[key] = np.stack([
np.asarray(v, dtype=np.float32)
for v in t.scan().column("appearance").to_pylist()])
return _CTX_CACHE[key]
def explain(store, t0, t1, stream=None):
"""What the database believes is happening in a window — the teacher's own
words. Lets a result be checked rather than trusted."""
caps = store.table("context_captions").scan()
out = []
if len(caps) == 0 or "stream" not in caps.column_names:
return out # store has no captions (yet) — nothing to explain
for s, a, b, c in zip(caps.column("stream").to_pylist(),
caps.column("ts").to_pylist(),
caps.column("t1").to_pylist(),
caps.column("caption").to_pylist()):
if stream and s != stream:
continue
if b >= t0 and a <= t1:
out.append({"stream": s, "t0": a, "t1": b, "caption": c})
return out
def _embed_frames_fdnnv(store, frame_table, incremental, verbose, streams):
"""Every frame through the FDNN-V streaming encoder -> frame_vectors."""
import pyarrow as pa
from .fdnnvideo import embed_stream, load_encoder
mdir = store.dir / "models" / "fdnnv"
if not (mdir / "encoder.json").exists():
# a NEW store has no encoder yet — adopt one from a sibling store
# and COPY it in, so the store stays self-contained and the exact
# weights that wrote its vectors are pinned with its data
import shutil
donors = sorted(store.dir.parent.glob("*/models/fdnnv/encoder.json"),
key=lambda p: p.stat().st_mtime, reverse=True)
if not donors:
raise RuntimeError(
"no FDNN-V encoder found in this store or any sibling — "
"train one first (scripts/fdnnv_train.py)")
shutil.copytree(donors[0].parent, mdir)
if verbose:
print(f" adopted encoder from {donors[0].parent}", flush=True)
model, meta = load_encoder(mdir)
# FRESH-DATA FIDELITY GATE: the fast student was distilled on one
# style of footage; on an arbitrary upload its fidelity to the teacher
# is unknown. 32 of THIS store's frames go through both encoders; if
# mean cosine < 0.90 the store gets the TEACHER (slower ingest, right
# space) instead of a fast-but-wrong index. Automatic — a fresh
# customer never has to know this exists.
try:
from PIL import Image
from .embeddings import DEFAULT_MODEL, _embed_images
from .video import FrameSet
frames_all = store.table(frame_table).scan()
pick = np.linspace(0, len(frames_all) - 1,
min(32, len(frames_all))).round().astype(int)
rows = frames_all.take(pick)
ts_s, sv, _, _ = embed_stream(store, model, rows)
dec = FrameSet(store, frame_table, rows).decode(width=448)
imgs = [Image.fromarray(d[1]) for d in sorted(dec)]
tv = _embed_images(imgs, DEFAULT_MODEL)
n = min(len(sv), len(tv))
svn = sv[:n] / (np.linalg.norm(sv[:n], axis=1,
keepdims=True) + 1e-8)
fid = float((svn * tv[:n]).sum(1).mean())
if verbose:
print(f" student fidelity on this corpus: {fid:.3f}",
flush=True)
if fid < 0.90:
print(f" fidelity {fid:.3f} < 0.90 — falling back to the "
f"TEACHER encoder for this store", flush=True)
return embed_frames(store, frame_table, model="fast",
incremental=incremental, verbose=verbose,
streams=streams, engine="siglip")
except Exception as e:
if verbose:
print(f" fidelity gate skipped ({type(e).__name__})",
flush=True)
frames = store.table(frame_table).scan()
allst = sorted(set(frames.column("stream").to_pylist()))
use = [s for s in allst if s in streams] if streams else allst
done = {}
if incremental:
try:
prev = store.table("frame_vectors").scan()
for s_, t_ in zip(prev.column("stream").to_pylist(),
prev.column("ts").to_pylist()):
done[s_] = max(done.get(s_, -1), t_)
except Exception:
pass
t_start = time.time()
rows_ts, rows_stream, rows_vec = [], [], []
for s in use:
sel = frames.filter(pc.equal(frames.column("stream"), s))
if s in done:
sel = sel.filter(pc.greater(sel.column("ts"), done[s]))
if len(sel) == 0:
continue
sel = sel.take(pc.sort_indices(sel.column("ts")))
ts, vecs, dec_s, emb_s = embed_stream(store, model, sel)
if verbose:
print(f" {s}: {len(ts):,} frames (decode {dec_s:.1f}s, "
f"embed {emb_s:.1f}s)", flush=True)
rows_ts.extend(int(t) for t in ts)
rows_stream.extend([s] * len(ts))
rows_vec.extend(vecs)
if not rows_ts:
return {"frames": 0, "note": "nothing new (incremental)"}
dim = len(rows_vec[0])
tbl = pa.table({
"ts": pa.array(rows_ts, pa.int64()),
"stream": pa.array(rows_stream),
"vector": pa.array([v.tolist() for v in rows_vec],
pa.list_(pa.float32(), dim)),
})
version = store.table("frame_vectors").append(
tbl, kind="embeddings",
meta={"model": "fdnnv", "teacher": meta.get("teacher"),
"dim": dim, "every_frame": True,
"source_table": frame_table})
return {"frames": len(tbl), "dim": dim, "version": version,
"engine": "fdnnv",
"seconds": round(time.time() - t_start, 1)}