--- title: Small Cuts emoji: 🎬 colorFrom: indigo colorTo: purple sdk: gradio sdk_version: 6.18.0 app_file: app.py hf_oauth: true pinned: true license: mit short_description: A deadpan narrator for your life, from small open models. models: - Qwen/Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct tags: - track:wood - sponsor:modal - achievement:offgrid - achievement:offbrand - achievement:llama - achievement:fieldnotes --- # Small Cuts 🎬 > *"And that was the moment Carlos realized the coffee had been decaf all along."* **Small Cuts** turns first-person moments into grounded, cinematic, **spoken** narration β€” an omniscient, slightly-too-honest narrator in the spirit of *The Invention of Lying* β€” using only **small (≀32B) open models**. No script, no cloud LLM: a small vision-language model watches your moment and a small text-to-speech voice speaks the line, the way a film narrator would if your life were the film. There is exactly **one narrator**: a single deadpan, unnamed voice. No menus, no director to pick. You point at what's happening; it tells you what it means. This is a submission to the **Build Small Hackathon** ("Small Models, Big Adventures" β€” Gradio Γ— Hugging Face). --- ## Two paths, one finished cut Small Cuts is a deliberate comparison of two techniques that both land as the **same** finished artifact in this Space β€” a clip with a generated title, narration, Kokoro voice, synced captions, a library tile, and a source badge. | Path | Who | Channel | What it proves | Badge | |---|---|---|---|---| | **Whole video, one pass** | A judge, in this Space | Past events, any recording | It is **real and running** β€” verify it yourself, no access to the maker's hardware needed | `source="upload"` | | **Pieces + hints** | The wearer (Ray-Ban Meta glasses / iOS) | Clips from ~3s ago | The **soul** β€” embodied, off-grid, narrated in-ear *while the moment is still recent past* | `source="glasses"` | The public Space never reaches the maker's local hardware; the private home engine never exposes inference hardware to the public. Same output shape, two very different journeys. --- ## How judges can try it The Space is the **view platform + library** half of the loop: - **A live stage** with the current moment and movie-style subtitles over a constant dark bar, advancing with the voice-over. - **Voice-over replay** in a compact custom player whose video, sound, captions, and progress all share one audio clock. - **A public library** of real Ray-Ban Meta glasses moments, generated through the same local engine path so the channel is never empty. Source clips and mark points are curated; the visible titles, narration, voice, thumbnails, and clips are **produced by Small Cuts**. - **"Try it"** β€” a tucked-away, HF-login upload drawer. Sign in, drop a short video, and a private **Modal** GPU service runs the real Qwen + Kokoro pipeline and replays your generated cut in the same theater. This is the judge-verifiable path: no glasses or iOS required. **Privacy-first:** your upload is narrated *only for your session* β€” it's never added to the public library or shown to anyone else, and a refresh clears it. The library you browse is separate, curated, persistent content (real glasses moments); your private try-it never mixes into it. --- ## Architecture in one glance ``` Ray-Ban Meta glasses ──image frames──▢ home engine (small VLM + TTS) ──▢ narration in your ear β”‚ └──── finished cuts ────▢ the Space (watch Β· library) judge's browser ──short video──▢ Modal GPU (Qwen3-VL-8B + Kokoro) ──▢ finished cut in the Space ``` You walk through a moment, tap **Action!**, then tap **Cut!** when the scene has a readable beat. The narrator watches a selected first-person frame and speaks one grounded, deadpan line back in your ear while the moment is still recent past. The finished cut lands in the Space as a short POV clip with synced captions, title, voice, and library thumbnail. --- ## How it was built | Piece | Choice | Why | |---|---|---| | Narrator (VLM) | `Qwen/Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct` | Strong grounded captioning at **8B β€” well under 32B** | | Voice (TTS) | **Kokoro** (24 kHz) | Tiny, expressive, open; one signature deadpan delivery | | Space runtime | Gradio 6 on CPU | Public theater + library; uploads call Modal instead of warming models | | Judge upload service | **Modal** GPU app (`small-cuts-postcut`) | Finished-video verification path with real Qwen + Kokoro output | | Local live engine | FastAPI WS home node, **llama.cpp** | The in-ear loop + demo video; no cloud LLM/TTS API | | Capture | iOS app for Ray-Ban Meta glasses (`ios/SmallCuts/`) | First-person moments, the way it's meant to be lived | Built by **Carlos Crespo Macaya** as architect and lead. Development was accelerated with an AI toolchain β€” Claude (Opus) for design critique, Codex (GPT-5.x) for paired implementation, GLM for review, and Gemini for eval β€” all directed by Carlos. --- ## ≀32B compliance Every model is small and open-weight: - **Narrator:** `Qwen/Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct` β€” **8B parameters**, comfortably under the 32B cap. - **Voice:** **Kokoro** β€” a tiny open TTS model. There is no cloud LLM anywhere in the loop. The live, in-ear path runs entirely on local hardware through **llama.cpp**; the judge upload path runs the same small models on a Modal GPU so reviewers can verify real output without touching the maker's machine. --- ## Hackathon compliance | Rule | How Small Cuts complies | |---|---| | Gradio app hosted as a Space under the org | Final submission promotes to `build-small-hackathon/small-cuts` after personal-profile staging passes | | Every model < 32B | 8B VLM narrator + small Kokoro TTS, all open weights | | Demo video | Filmed POV with Ray-Ban Meta glasses β†’ narrated by the app *(link below)* | | Social post | Linked from this README *(link below)* | | Track 2 β€” **Thousand Token Wood** (`track:wood`) | Whimsical, delightful, AI-load-bearing, original | | Best Use of Modal (`sponsor:modal`) | The judge upload path runs Qwen + Kokoro on a Modal GPU | | Off the Grid (`achievement:offgrid`) | Live inference/TTS run on local hardware; the public Space reads finished cuts only | | Off-Brand (`achievement:offbrand`) | Custom cinematic frontend past the stock Gradio look | | Llama (`achievement:llama`) | The live engine runs through `llama.cpp` | | Field Notes (`achievement:fieldnotes`) | Public write-up β€” [field notes on the HF blog](https://huggingface.co/blog/build-small-hackathon/small-cuts-field-notes) | ### Submission links - πŸ“Ή **Demo video (YouTube):** [youtu.be/UCEP8ipYhSQ](https://youtu.be/UCEP8ipYhSQ) - πŸ“£ **Social post (LinkedIn):** [Small Cuts on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/carlos-crespo-macaya_youtube-share-7472437932679782400-V9ze/) - πŸ“ **Field notes / write-up:** [hf.co/blog/build-small-hackathon/small-cuts-field-notes](https://huggingface.co/blog/build-small-hackathon/small-cuts-field-notes) > **Integrity note:** every preselected/hero clip in this Space is narrated by the **actual > Small Cuts pipeline** (real Qwen3-VL-8B + Kokoro output) β€” never hand-written narration. --- ## License Released under the **MIT License** β€” see [`LICENSE`](LICENSE) in the repository.