Index.En

+++ disableToc = false title = "Features" weight = 4 icon = "lightbulb" type = "chapter" url = "/features/" +++

LocalAI provides a comprehensive set of features for running AI models locally. The pages in this section are grouped by capability, and the left navigation is ordered to match these groups.

Text

• [Text Generation]({{% relref "features/text-generation" %}}) - Generate text with GPT-compatible models using various backends.
• [OpenAI Functions and tools]({{% relref "features/openai-functions" %}}) - Use function calling and the tools API with local models.
• [Constrained Grammars]({{% relref "features/constrained_grammars" %}}) - Control model output format with BNF grammars.
• [Interleaved thinking]({{% relref "features/interleaved-thinking" %}}) - Reasoning models that interleave thought and output.
• [Model aliases]({{% relref "features/model-aliases" %}}) - Expose one model under several names.
• [API discovery]({{% relref "features/api-discovery" %}}) - How LocalAI advertises its capability surface.

Agents

• [Agents]({{% relref "features/agents" %}}) - Autonomous AI agents with tools, knowledge base, and skills.
• [Agent Actions]({{% relref "features/agent-actions" %}}) - The catalog of actions an agent can run.
• [Model Context Protocol (MCP)]({{% relref "features/mcp" %}}) - Give a model external tools over MCP.
• [LocalAI Assistant]({{% relref "features/localai-assistant" %}}) - Chat to administer your LocalAI instance.
• [Terminal agent]({{% relref "features/terminal-agent" %}}) - local-ai chat, an agent in your shell that runs commands behind an approval gate.

Audio

• [Audio to text]({{% relref "features/audio-to-text" %}}) - Transcribe audio to text.
• [Text to audio]({{% relref "features/text-to-audio" %}}) - Generate speech, music, and sound effects from text.
• [Audio classification]({{% relref "features/audio-classification" %}}) - Classify sounds and audio events.
• [Audio diarization]({{% relref "features/audio-diarization" %}}) - Separate speakers in an audio stream.
• [Audio transform]({{% relref "features/audio-transform" %}}) - Transform and process audio.
• [Voice Activity Detection]({{% relref "features/voice-activity-detection" %}}) - Detect speech segments in audio data.
• [Voice recognition]({{% relref "features/voice-recognition" %}}) - Identify speakers by voice.
• [Realtime API]({{% relref "features/openai-realtime" %}}) - Low-latency multi-modal conversations (voice and text) over WebSocket.

Vision

• [GPT Vision]({{% relref "features/gpt-vision" %}}) - Analyze and understand images with vision-language models.
• [Object detection]({{% relref "features/object-detection" %}}) - Detect and locate objects in images.
• [Face recognition]({{% relref "features/face-recognition" %}}) - Recognize faces in images.

Image and Video

• [Image Generation]({{% relref "features/image-generation" %}}) - Create images with Stable Diffusion and other diffusion models.
• [Video Generation]({{% relref "features/video-generation" %}}) - Generate videos from text, image, or audio conditioning, including LongCat and avatar workflows.

Retrieval

• [Embeddings]({{% relref "features/embeddings" %}}) - Generate vector embeddings for semantic search and RAG applications.
• [Reranker]({{% relref "features/reranker" %}}) - Improve retrieval accuracy with cross-encoder models.
• [Stores]({{% relref "features/stores" %}}) - Vector similarity search for embeddings.

Distributed and acceleration

• [Distributed inference]({{% relref "features/distributed_inferencing" %}}) - Scale inference across multiple nodes (P2P federation or production distributed mode).
• [Distributed mode]({{% relref "features/distributed-mode" %}}) - The production distributed deployment.
• [MLX distributed]({{% relref "features/mlx-distributed" %}}) - Distributed inference on Apple Silicon with MLX.
• [GPU Acceleration]({{% relref "features/GPU-acceleration" %}}) - Optimize performance with GPU support.

Platform and model management

• [Backends]({{% relref "features/backends" %}}) - Available backends and how to manage them.
• [Model Gallery]({{% relref "features/model-gallery" %}}) - Browse and install pre-configured models.
• [Runtime Settings]({{% relref "features/runtime-settings" %}}) - Configure application settings via the web UI without restarting.
• [Quantization]({{% relref "features/quantization" %}}) - Quantize models for smaller memory footprint.
• [Fine-tuning]({{% relref "features/fine-tuning" %}}) - Fine-tune models on your own data.
• [Authentication]({{% relref "features/authentication" %}}) - Protect the API with keys.

For operator-facing runtime, proxy, and monitoring concerns (middleware, cloud and MITM proxies, backend monitor), see the [Operations]({{% relref "operations" %}}) section.

Getting Started

To start using these features, make sure you have [LocalAI installed]({{% relref "getting-started/install" %}}) and have [downloaded some models]({{% relref "getting-started/models" %}}). Then explore the feature pages above to learn how to use each capability.