PotionUI is a self-hosted app for making images and videos with AI models. Every model gets its own simple, hand-made form instead of one huge settings screen.

0.0.17 is about getting to your models faster: point PotionUI at your folder and they are ready straight away, with no long wait while your library is read. It also brings prompt conditions, a new Generate page, Model Tools for shrinking and merging models, and a fix for pictures and video inside Pinokio.

Your models are ready the moment you point PotionUI at your folder

• Indexing no longer reads your whole library up front. PotionUI lists your files and reads their headers, and the models are usable at once.
• Verifying the files happens afterwards, quietly in the background at low priority, and it pauses while you generate. Admins can slow it down or pause it.
• After setup you make a one-time choice: verify everything, pick which models to verify, or decide later. It is asked after setup instead of on top of the setup wizard.
• First-run setup never waits for verification, and setup recipes check at most two look-alike files before deciding to download.

Pinokio

• Pictures, video and other media now show when PotionUI is embedded in Pinokio's window.

What's new

• Prompt conditions: write if / else if / otherwise to pick different text per image, based on your prompt's variables. A wide editor (type << to open it) shows a preview per image and warns about unfinished branches.
• Number variables join Choice variables. Your variables are now kept on the server per user, and PotionAI can read and change them. PotionAI also understands conditions and can add or delete segments.
• Generate page: a toolbar under the tabs holds preset, mode, variant and session on the left, and Save plus the tools on the right. The preset dropdown has search, Recent, Pinned and model families. A preset without a backend can still be picked, with Generate disabled and the reason shown.
• Now-playing deck: the generation panel shows a thumbnail of the result and a soft glow of the last picture. Tabs show a dot for unsaved changes, a session can be reloaded from its last snapshot, and a required model slot fills itself when exactly one installed model matches.
• History: cards show how long a run took. A generation's Details now has its own link, so you can bookmark it or share it. Deleting an X/Y compare removes the whole compare after one confirm.
• Collections: History, Library, Prompts, Inspirations and Models share a redesigned collections sidebar with search, an Include subcollections option and a phone sheet. Prompt search is faster.
• Model Tools (admin only): quantize a model to FP8, INT8, INT8 ConvRot, NVFP4 or INT4 ConvRot, bake a LoRA or LoKr into a model, or merge LoRAs. The result is saved next to its source and shows up as a model card in the Workbench and History. Layers a format cannot hold stay in their original precision and are reported to you. FLUX 3 Klein can now load the INT8 and INT4 ConvRot files, LoRAs included.
• MOSS-Image: SFT and Base presets, a LoRA tab, a starter recipe and an optional step cache.
• Krea-2: an experimental Text Enhancer (off by default) for stronger prompt adherence, and a Text Scale slider.
• Chat can show the model's thinking. If an admin switches on "Show thinking to users" for a chat configuration (off by default), the reasoning appears in a foldable block above each reply, live with a timer, and it is never sent back to the model as context.
• Sign in through your identity provider: the sign-in plugin can send signed-out visitors straight to your identity provider (off by default). A local sign-in form stays available for recovery, every login returns you to the page you were on, and registration accepts local-domain emails.
• Automations: an admin-only HTTP request action with a test panel and encrypted secret headers, and Auto-organize can file generations by their Media Tagging tags.
• Phones and keyboard: Chat sits in the bottom nav on every page, the deck sits above the tab bar, and headers, Generation Details and confirm dialogs fit a phone. Focus rings show only while you use the keyboard, tooltips open on keyboard focus, Escape closes only the topmost popover, and shortcut hints show the command key on macOS.

Easier and nicer

• LLM settings: each configuration gets one Context window field with a Detect button, and chat now sends shorter prompts and only the tools a mode needs.
• Prompts: a literal $, % or # is plain text now instead of silently switching off every choice, and Save as prompt keeps all your variables.
• Speed and memory: torch.compile also runs on fp8-scaled and streamed models, and a streamed MiniMax-H3 pins 19.5 GB of system memory instead of 30.6 GB and keeps more of long clips on the GPU.
• Admin: Admin > Presets remembers its open tab in the address, and the account menu links to the community.
• Reliability: the backend keeps serving past 10,000 requests, History loads faster, heavy work no longer blocks the server, and regular users no longer see unexpected error text or file paths.

Fixed

• Krea-2 Enhance no longer leaves noise in the picture.
• Cancelling a cloud generation on a provider that cannot cancel shows a calm notice instead of an error.
• Approving a prompt-variable change in chat reports what was actually applied.
• The $, /, @ and # pickers insert at the character you typed in a multi-line prompt.
• Typing in a choice group's options no longer triggers global shortcuts.
• MiniMax-H3 finds the bundled ffmpeg, and fails before sampling instead of after.
• Model Browser preview images load more reliably.

Before you update

• Back up your storage folder first. It is a good habit before any update.
• Prompt variables you kept in your browser move to the server the first time you open the app.
• Ollama configurations that used Thinking Mode "Automatic" become "Disabled", and thinking stays hidden until "Show thinking to users" is on.
• If an install never verified its models and has a large library (over 20 files or 64 GiB), it is asked once how to verify them and verifies nothing until you answer. The models are usable either way. Installs where any model was already verified keep verifying in the background.
• A stored S3 secret key and plugin credentials that were saved in clear text are encrypted on first start.
• The installer needs Node.js 22 or newer.

Update:

• Docker: pull the new image (ghcr.io/potionui/potionui:0.0.17, or latest).
• Installer: run git pull, then ./potionui start.
• Pinokio: click Update in Pinokio.

GitHub · Discord

Try it and tell us what to improve, here or on Discord.

If PotionUI is useful to you, a star on GitHub helps other people find it: https://github.com/PotionUI/PotionUI

Next up in 0.0.18: model indexing follow-ups (moved files recognised without being read again, verifying a model while it downloads) and more polish.

Hello, if you guys have any generations you want to share - do it! It will not only give you opportunity to share and discuss your creations with others, but will also help to promote this subreddit - and therefore PotionUI app discovery across Reddit. Thanks!

Let's just keep it SFW tho.

I've added first version of the Pinokio script for PotionUI: https://pinokio.co/apps/github-com-potionui-potionui-pinokio, so if anyone is installing apps through this interface tests will be appreciated.

PotionUI is a self-hosted app for making images and videos with AI models. Every model gets its own simple, hand-made form instead of one huge settings screen.

0.0.16 brings FLUX 3 Klein to your own GPU, a Model Browser (plugin) that finds and fetches models for you, prompt variables without limits, and batch prompts.

FLUX 3 Klein (experimental)

• Black Forest Labs' new FLUX 3 Klein runs on your own GPU, both the Base and the faster distilled checkpoint.
• Text to image, and edit with several reference images: pick two pictures and describe what to make of them.
• Pick Turbo (16 steps) or Base (50 steps), like on the other models.
• It is marked experimental until more people have tried it. Tell us how it goes.

Model Browser

• Browse Hugging Face, CivitAI and OpenModelDB right inside PotionUI: search, filters, versions, files, trigger words and licence in one panel.
• Download a model straight into the right folder, or, if your admin prefers, ask for it and get a notification when it is approved.
• Admins decide per user group who may browse, download, request or approve, from which sources and up to which size. Previews follow your instance's sensitive-content setting.
• A big thank you to M4-S4, who built the whole Model Browser and contributed it to PotionUI.

Prompt variables

• The variables window lists every variable on the left and edits the selected one on the right.
• A small green tick shows which variables the prompt actually uses.
• No limit on how many variables a prompt can have.
• Use a choice variable twice and pick whether both uses share one roll (Linked) or roll on their own (Independent). Each use is numbered 1/2, 2/2.

Batch prompts

• Write several prompts and run them with one Generate. Each prompt gets its own History entry.

Easier and nicer

• X/Y compare: grid cells count their steps while they run, a finished grid sends one notification instead of one per cell, and small grids fit their pane.
• Chat: approving a tool happens in a card inside the reply and the answer just continues. PotionAI now saves your prompt exactly as you wrote it and confirms it by name.
• Search: History, gallery and chat search find prompts written in the segmented prompt editor.
• Media fields: pick several images from History at once.
• Sessions: you stay signed in while you use the app, even across a backend restart.

Fixed

• History's "All generations" count matches the list.
• The prompt toolbar keeps its menu inside the card on narrow screens.
• A plugin setting switched off stays off after Save.
• Plugins clean up properly when they are reloaded or removed.

Before you update

• Back up your storage folder and your database first. It is a good habit before any update.
• History and gallery search now look at prompt text, preset and model names only, so a seed number no longer finds a generation.
• The Model Browser is a marketplace plugin: enable it in Admin > Plugins and set who may use it.

Update: Docker, pull the new image. Manual install, run git pull, then pip install -r requirements.txt -c constraints.txt inside the venv, then ./potionui start.

GitHub · Discord

Try it and tell us what to improve, here or on Discord.

If PotionUI is useful to you, a star on GitHub helps other people find it: https://github.com/PotionUI/PotionUI

PotionUI is a self-hosted app for making images and videos with AI models. Every model gets its own simple, hand-made form instead of one huge settings screen.

0.0.15 lets you compare settings side by side, adds photo filters, files your library for you, lets admins set limits per user, and brings three more cloud providers.

Compare settings in a grid (X/Y compare)

• Press Compare next to Generate, pick the settings for the X and Y axes, give each a few values, and one Generate fills a whole grid, one cell per combination.
• The grid fills in live and shows how long each cell took. Video grids play in sync, and a finished grid can be stitched into one image.
• History keeps the grid as one card, and each cell tells you which values it used.
• It works with cloud models too (aspect ratio, quality and so on), and on the phone view.

Photo filters

• The image editor has a new Filters tool with twelve built-in looks, an intensity slider and fine-tuning.
• Found a look you like? Save it as your own filter.
• Plugins can add more filters.

Auto-organize

• Set up rules once and new generations, uploads and models are filed into collections and tags for you.
• Preview a rule before saving, apply it to what you already have, and undo it from the rule's activity list.
• Collections now include their sub-collections by default, with filters for direct-only, Unsorted and Favorites. Prompts can be favorited too.

Plans and limits (for admins)

• Cap storage, daily generations, monthly cloud spend and the size of a single upload, with a default plan, group plans and personal overrides.
• Users see their plan and usage in Settings, a limit bar in the account menu, and a storage card in History that points to their largest generations.
• If something is refused, it says why, with a live countdown.

Three more cloud providers

• OpenAI GPT Image: text to image and edit, with references and a painted mask.
• Google Gemini: Nano Banana images and Veo 3.1 video.
• Black Forest Labs: FLUX models.
• Each has its own preset and a setup guide. They join OpenRouter from the last release.

Easier and nicer

• Several accounts in one browser: switch from the user menu or the phone Accounts sheet, each with its own tabs.
• Generate screen: a tidier header with plain mode names, a negative prompt that hides when it would be ignored, and a Resolved prompt row that shows which variables re-roll per image.
• History and Library: every card has a Delete button and an actions menu, readable on any image.
• Faster LoRAs: LoRAs on fp8 and nvfp4 models no longer slow every layer.
• LTX-2.5 IC-LoRA: references can be videos in Video Director.
• 3D: a new Pixal3D preset turns one image or four views into a textured mesh, and TRELLIS.2 export is several times faster.
• Chat and MCP: MCP tools work without an open browser tab, and prompts can be read and listed from chat.
• Plugins: plugins can have setup steps and show a "Setup needed" badge.

Fixed

• Edit image works right after an upload and is not offered while the upload is still processing.
• Your chosen sampler survives closing the form, switching tabs and reloading a session.
• Switching Krea-2 NAG off really turns it off.
• A cancelled cloud generation never reaches the provider.
• Two PotionUI instances on one host no longer break each other's images.
• Failed generations explain what happened in plain words, and new tabs never show the previous tab's form.
• Daily limits work on Windows.

Before you update

• Back up your storage folder and your database first. It is a good habit before any update.
• Generated images, uploads and avatars now need a signed-in viewer. A bare media link opened outside a logged-in browser will no longer load.
• If you tuned the engine with environment variables, those values are copied into Admin once on first start and ignored afterwards. Change them in each native backend's Optimizations tab from then on.
• Manual installs need one new dependency, so reinstall the requirements after pulling.

Update: Docker, pull the new image. Manual install, run git pull, then pip install -r requirements.txt -c constraints.txt inside the venv, then ./potionui start.

GitHub · Discord

Try it and tell us what to improve, here or on Discord.

If PotionUI is useful to you, a star on GitHub helps other people find it: https://github.com/PotionUI/PotionUI

Next up: more polish and fixes.

One of the last batches of "management" side of the PotionUI will bring two new features:

1. Plans

Plans will allow to assign user (or user groups) a limit of storage / generations (and others). For example you can set that user is allowed to use max of 2GB of disk space or be limited to 10 generations a day (or both). This is aimed for admins that want their instance size be under control.

2. Auto-Organize

This feature will allow users to automatically organize their generations/models/uploads by certain criteria (prompt, aspect ratios, models, size etc.). They will be able to move such generations into certain collections or give them tags.

Both features will be extensible by plugins, so if anyone will be interested in modification it will be doable.

If you have any suggestions about these, this is the time! I'm aiming for release on Thursday (08.10.2026). Ofcourse there will be more changes coming, but want ask if you have any ideas about these two.

PotionUI is a self-hosted app for making images and videos with AI models. Instead of one huge settings screen or a web of nodes, every model gets its own simple, hand-made form.

Until now you needed your own GPU. 0.0.14 adds cloud models, plus a built-in image editor and a way to save and reuse your best settings.

No GPU? Use cloud models

• A new OpenRouter plugin lets you use hosted image and video models, such as Nano Banana or Veo 3.1 Lite, in the same form you already know. Results land in the same History as everything else. More providers are planned.
• The form only shows the controls the chosen model supports, so there is nothing to guess.
• You can stop a cloud job at any time, and PotionUI tells you plainly if something goes wrong.

Cloud Video Director: one idea, a short film

Write your idea, split it into shots, and let PotionUI make the film.

• Each shot can continue from the last frame of the shot before it, so the story flows.
• The shots are joined into one finished film.
• If one shot fails, retry just that shot instead of starting over.

Fix a picture without leaving the app

• A new image editor with adjustments, crop, brush and layers.
• Open it from History (Tools, then Edit image) or right inside a preset's media field. In a media field, the field switches to your edited copy straight away.
• Crop, Trim and Frame editors are in media fields too, and they only add the edited result to your Library, never the untouched original.

Formulas: keep the settings that worked

• Save the settings of a preset mode as a formula and apply it in any session.
• Before it applies, you see exactly what will change, and one click undoes it.

A redesigned media field

• Images, videos and audio live in one field, each kind in its own group.
• Mention them in your prompt with "@".
• MiniMax-H3 references now use it, and your old sessions and saved prompts are converted for you.

Qwen-Image 2.1 control guides

• Keep the pose, edges or depth of any photo while you create something new.
• The extracted guide is saved next to your result, and the workbench shows it beside the image with a label, so you can see what the model followed.
• There is also a mode that only extracts the guide. It needs no prompt and works even if you haven't downloaded the image models.

Smaller things

• Video presets have animated covers.
• Three-pane mode folds the form away on narrow screens and gives the room to your prompts.
• Attaching an image in chat uses the same picker as the preset forms.
• Plugins are grouped by what they add.
• The System Monitor can show every backend. It is admins only by default.
• Failed generations show regular users a plain reason instead of technical text.
• Dropdown menus no longer open under the Generate bar, and they work with the arrow keys.
• Fields in preset forms show and hide for the value you just picked, not the previous one.
• Image previews survive a reload, including on Windows and in storage folders under a tmp folder.
• Drawn inpaint masks now reach the model, so inpaint only repaints the masked area.
• Pressing Enter in the session name saves the session, and Enter elsewhere no longer wipes your workspace.

Before you update

• Back up your storage folder first. It is a good habit before any update.
• To use cloud models, enable the OpenRouter plugin in Admin and add your API key.
• The Docker setup no longer has an outputs volume. Everything you generate lives in the storage volume.
• Plugin authors: plugin manifests must use one of the current categories. A plugin with an old category name won't load.

Update: run git pull and then ./potionui start, or pull the latest Docker image.

GitHub · Discord · r/PotionUI

Try it and tell us what to improve, here or on Discord. Your reports decide what we do next.

If PotionUI is useful to you, a star on GitHub helps other people find it: https://github.com/PotionUI/PotionUI

As in the title - I've integrated a "cloud" models feature, which will come in 0.0.14 (probably later today). First plugin will be available for OpenRouter (as I find it most useful and fast to use - it has most of the models ready to use). Overall this feature fits nicely within the app - I can mix local models with cloud ones fast & easy. For example this video is seedance 2.5 720p upscaled with RTX Upscale plugin x2.

PotionUI is a self-hosted app for making images and videos with AI models on your own computer. Instead of one huge settings screen or a web of nodes, every model gets its own simple, hand-made form.

Last release let you bring your own model folders. This one makes PotionUI understand them, whichever tool they came from.

Works with the tools you already use

• Point PotionUI at a ComfyUI, Forge/A1111/SD.Next, StabilityMatrix, Fooocus, SwarmUI or Pinokio folder. It recognises the tool and finds your checkpoints, LoRAs, VAEs, upscalers and the rest on its own. You can still correct its guess.
• Tools that keep several folders for one kind of model (like Lora and LyCORIS) are handled, and you choose which one gets new downloads.
• If your tool's settings point to models somewhere else, PotionUI offers those folders too. That includes Windows drives when you run PotionUI in WSL.
• Unusual layout? Browse your folder and pick any subfolder for a model type.

Smarter about what a model is

• Forge and StabilityMatrix keep full checkpoints and bare diffusion models in the same folder. PotionUI now looks inside each file and tells them apart, so your Flux, Qwen, Z-Image, Wan and other models show up in the right pickers.
• If it can't tell what a file is, it says so instead of guessing, and an admin can set the type by hand. That choice sticks, even after a rescan.

More control for admins

• A new list of every running and queued generation from all users, with Stop, Remove and Stop all.
• Content safety: NSFW results can be allowed, blurred or blocked for the whole instance, and each user group can have its own setting. A banned-words list refuses prompts before anything is generated, and you can test a prompt against it right there.

Sessions

• Sessions open in a side drawer with search, a clearer history of what changed, and pins for the ones you use most.

Fixed

• Model downloads failing with a "certificate" error on Windows and WSL. If something still gets in the way (a company proxy, for example), the error now tells you how to fix it.
• Stop really stops a generation now, and never claims it stopped when it didn't.
• First-run recipes no longer get stuck when a download site has no API key set yet.
• Downloads appear in your lists as soon as they finish.
• The NSFW setting saves again.

Before you update

• PotionUI has a new address: http://localhost:26731. The old port turned out to be used by Windows itself on most PCs, which stopped PotionUI from starting. Update your bookmarks, or set BACKEND_PORT and FRONTEND_PORT if you want to keep the old ports. If that port is ever taken, ./potionui start picks a free one instead.
• This version updates its database the first time it starts, and you can't go back to an older version afterwards. Now is a good moment to back up your storage folder.

Update: run git pull and then ./potionui start, or pull the latest Docker image.

GitHub · Discord

PotionUI is still early (alpha). If your model folders still aren't picked up correctly, tell us which tool you use, here or on Discord. Your reports decide what we fix next! Coming in 0.0.14: cloud models, starting with OpenRouter, for when your own GPU isn't enough.

PotionUI is a self-hosted app for making images and videos with AI models on your own computer. Instead of one huge settings screen or a web of nodes, every model gets its own simple, hand-made form.

This release is all about the very first thing everyone runs into: getting PotionUI to find your models.

Use the model folders you already have

• Already have models in ComfyUI, A1111 or on an external drive? Just point PotionUI at that folder. Nothing gets copied or moved.
• You can add several folders, and choose where new downloads should go.
• Folders can be marked read-only, so PotionUI will never write into them.
• Works on Windows too, including mapped drives.

See what's happening with your models

• When PotionUI scans your models you now see live progress instead of guessing.
• If it skips a file, it tells you why — for example "this is the same file as one you already have".
• If the app restarts in the middle of a scan, it simply picks up where it left off.

Easier downloads

• Paste a normal CivitAI model page link and PotionUI figures out the rest.
• Downloaded files keep their real names instead of random numbers.
• The downloads list updates by itself again — no more refreshing to see progress.

Nice little things

• Closing a tab now asks "are you sure?" — no more losing work by an accidental click.
• The "Suggested models" list in the model picker is tidier and folded away until you need it.
• The chat assistant remembers longer conversations.

Fixed

• Dropdown menus no longer hide behind other menus and pop-ups.
• The CivitAI "Fetch prompts" window can be closed again.
• Saved sessions no longer claim they have unsaved changes right after saving.
• Text boxes look cleaner when you click into them.

Before you update

This version updates its database the first time it starts, and there's no going back to an older version afterwards — so it's a good moment to make a backup copy of your storage folder. If you used shortcuts (symlinks) to model folders before, PotionUI converts them for you automatically.

Update: run git pull and then ./potionui start, or pull the latest Docker image.

GitHub · Discord

PotionUI is still early (alpha). If something doesn't work — especially model folders on Windows or unusual ComfyUI setups — tell me here or on Discord. Your reports decide what we fix next! Coming in 0.0.13: choosing any subfolder for a model type.

MiniMax H3 preset + https://huggingface.co/pablodawson/MiniMax-H3-360-Orbit-LoRA -> I've used only first frame here.

PotionUI is a self-hosted studio for image, video and audio generation. 0.0.11 is out, and these are the main changes:

Prompts you can read at a glance 

Each model can now bring its own prompt syntax, and the editor colors it as you type:

• MiniMax-H3's subject_definitions: and <Subject 1>, dialogue in <d>…</d>,
• Qwen-Image's "quoted text to render",
• YuE2's [Verse] and [Chorus].

Type / and a picker lists everything the model understands, with a one-line explanation for each.

Point at your own images with @ 

In presets that take reference images, video or audio (MiniMax-H3 references, Qwen-Image edits), type @ and pick one: it becomes a chip with a thumbnail, and the model receives it as <Picture 2> even if you reorder your uploads later.

Each upload in the form shows its handle and how many times the prompt uses it. In the Video Director, each shot now uses exactly the references its prompt mentions.

A new picker for phrases, variables and references 

Typing #, $, @ or / opens a clearer picker right at the cursor, with thumbnails. Clicking a chip opens one editor where you change its value, switch between a fixed value and auto-shuffle, exclude a value from shuffles, or remove it. Phrasebook values show their preview images, with Space or → to open a larger preview and flip through them. Search highlights what matched and takes regular expressions.

Typing is fast again 

Long prompts no longer lag: each keystroke used to re-render the whole form, and now it doesn't.

Model library 

Search takes wildcards (krea2_*_v2) and regular expressions, and the type and tag counts follow your filters. Admins can filter by when a model was indexed and how often it's used, see Uses and Last used columns, and tag or grant access to a whole selection at once. Model pickers now suggest the download that fits your GPU (bf16, fp8, int8, nvfp4) and credit the uploader..

Chat (PotionAI) 

@ can point at one LoRA from your form or any model in your library, and the assistant gets its trigger words and recommended strength. There's a new session memory that follows the tab you're working in. Generations you approve in chat now appear in the tab's Workbench.

Generation errors that make sense 

When a generation fails, you see a plain message, a hint and an error ID to give your admin. Admins see the full details, can filter failures by category, and can get notified or trigger an automation.

Admin, one last time 

Every admin page now shares the same layout: a library sidebar, tables or card grids, detail pages and one bottom bar for bulk actions. LLM configurations list your Ollama or OpenAI-compatible models to pick from.

!! A word on all the UI changes 

I know the look has changed a lot over the last few releases, and that can be tiring when you use the app every day. This was the last big overhaul: I'm happy with how the app looks and works now. From here on it's improvements on top of this layout, not another rebuild.

What's next 

The focus moves to what the models can do and how fast they do it: ControlNets, Fun controls and more model capabilities, plus optimization work, more models support (from API providers)...

Smaller changes 

1. Folding the left panel now gives the prompt a proper width.
2. Every confirm dialog takes Enter and Esc.
3. Reloading warns you before you lose changes that aren't saved to the session.
4. Indexing a large model no longer freezes the app.
5. CivitAI fetches retry temporary errors and tell you the real reason when they fail.
6. System tags now land on new generations automatically.
7. Fixed: phrasebook chips with a hyphen in their name, and a phrase placed right after a reference.
8. Removed: the Spectral Progressive Diffusion option in Flux2 and Z-Image. Saved settings that include it keep working.

Upgrading: five database migrations run automatically on first start. There's one new Python dependency (google-re2), so run pip install -r requirements.txt if you don't use Docker. Log files from earlier versions may contain session tokens, so delete or rotate them. Docker images are now also tagged with the "v": ghcr.io/potionui/potionui:v0.0.11.

GitHub: https://github.com/PotionUI/PotionUI

Site: https://potionui.com

Reddit: r/PotionUI

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/avR4trp3b8

Feedback and bug reports are welcome.

PotionUI is a self-hosted studio for image, video and audio generation. 0.0.10 is out, and these are the main changes:

Variables that depend on each other

A prompt variable's option can now carry a condition: "only when $setting is deep under the sea". Write one prompt, and every generation rolls a combination that still makes sense. A few details:

1. Variables take any number of options.
2. You can copy and paste a set of variables as JSON between tabs or instances.
3. Saved prompts keep their variables, so applying one from the library brings them back.
4. The Video and Music Director expand variables per segment too.

A rebuilt Prompt Library

Prompts, segments, templates and categories are now card grids with filters, and each has a proper detail view. A picker on Generate applies a saved prompt, and every prompt shows where it was used and which collections it belongs to.

Qwen-Image 2.1

Native Qwen-Image 2.1 runs on the built-in engine, with a preset and a starter recipe. It does text-to-image and edits guided by one or more reference images. It also keeps real transparency: transparent outputs stay transparent in previews, thumbnails and downloads, with a checkerboard behind them in the gallery. The colored borders some of you saw along image edges are fixed, and checkpoints that store their weights split load as well.

Faster MiniMax-H3 

There's a new Fast variant, a latent upscale mode with its own Enhance tab, an int8 transformer option, and gate compression.

A cleaner admin panel 

Presets, Recipes and Plugins are now libraries with a category sidebar, and every admin list searches, filters and sorts through the same filter bar. Presets show as poster cards with their cover. (I'm currently working to change it further - recipes and plugins will become cards instead of list in 0.0.11, since list is not utilizing whole space for these features).

Export with A1111/Forge metadata 

A new marketplace plugin, A1111 metadata export, downloads your selected generations as a ZIP of PNGs with the generation parameters embedded, so other tools and sites can read them.

CivitAI prompts into your library 

The CivitAI provider can fetch a model's example prompts in bulk, including community images, straight into your Prompt Library.

Smaller changes 

1. Page headers look the same everywhere, and detail views put Back on the left.
2. The sidebar folds pages that don't fit into a More menu.
3. A failed generation releases its GPU memory right away.
4. Changing the prompt no longer reloads the text encoder from disk when it was skipped on a cached run.
5. Duplicate-prompt detection works on large libraries without eating memory.
6. Fixed: Kohya LoRAs with text-encoder weights load on SDXL again.
7. Fixed: page buttons on History and Library respond again next to drag-select.

Upgrading: two database migrations run automatically on first start. The A1111 export moved out of the CivitAI plugin, so enable the A1111 metadata export plugin if you used it. Docker images are tagged without the "v": ghcr.io/potionui/potionui:0.0.10.

GitHub: https://github.com/PotionUI/PotionUI. Feedback and bug reports are welcome.

PotionUI is a self-hosted studio for image, video and audio generation. 0.0.9 is out, and these are the main changes:

Log in with your own identity provider

Install the oidc-auth plugin from the marketplace and point it at Keycloak, Authentik, Entra or any other OIDC provider. Your users get a "Continue with…" button on the login page. If someone signs in for the first time, PotionUI creates their account automatically. A few details:

• An email is only saved if your provider has verified it.
• SSO users don't see a password form they can't use.
• If a login is refused, the page tells the user why instead of failing silently.

Fill model cards from CivitAI in one click (in video)

Every model card now has its own fetch button. It pulls the description, preview images and videos, and trigger words from CivitAI. It only fills fields that are empty, so your own edits stay untouched. Trigger words now come from the model's actual trained words and are no longer mixed in with its tags. Model details also list where the file is mirrored, with links to each provider. Plugins can now add their own buttons to model cards.

Downloaded models stay in the pickers

Before this release, a model you downloaded, or one added by a recipe or a job, could disappear from the model pickers after a backend was indexed. New models are now registered right away.

Faster, especially with big libraries

• The frontend is served compressed and cached.
• Model and prompt lists load their data in batches instead of one query per row.
• Generation progress no longer makes the rest of the tab re-render.
• New database indexes speed up favorites, prompt search and model lookups.

Smaller changes

• History tiles now have separate action buttons with tooltips, like model cards.
• The global "Index Models" and bulk fetch buttons are gone from the Models page. Indexing now happens in Admin → Backends, and unindexed files link there.
• Fixed: boolean settings sent as the string "false" were not saved as false.
• Fixed: two indexing workers could pick up the same item.

Upgrading: two database migrations run automatically on first start. If you used the old Index Models button, you'll now find indexing under Admin → Backends.

GitHub: https://github.com/PotionUI/PotionUI. Feedback and bug reports are welcome.

0.0.8 — 2026-09-17

• Windows: PotionUI installs and runs natively on Windows as an experimental platform; potionui.cmd mirrors the Linux launcher with the same doctor, start, stop and install profiles; Python 3.12 is preferred when several versions are installed and doctor warns when only a newer one exists; Triton and compile optimizations are unavailable there, so attention runs on the standard path.
• Models: YuE2-3B joins as a native song preset with style tags, tagged lyrics, a chain-of-thought mode, duration and advanced sampling, plus a starter recipe that fetches its weights from Hugging Face and finishes with a real smoke generation; long songs decode in bounded memory.
• Generate: a categorized tags field lets a preset offer a curated vocabulary per category with search, keyboard picking and custom entries, first used by YuE2's style field; SDXL and Krea-2 each ship fifty styles with rendered previews, Krea-2 adds six amateur photo looks; Krea-2 gains an optional native face detailer with the choice to keep the base image; segment prefixes and suffixes render as labelled chips; the generation dock has a clearer top edge.
• Video Director: shot prompts get the preset's segment templates; durations and segment frames clamp to the model's limit instead of being rejected; the whole row expands a shot; MiniMax-H3 refs mode loads RefMod bundles, the 360-frame cap is gone for directed timelines, continuation shots condition on re-encoded frames, and a second generation no longer runs out of VRAM placing its VAEs.
• Chat: a New chat button in the header, an unread-reply dot on the sidebar icon and an optional chime when a reply finishes; tooltips replace native titles across the chat window; context is attached to the current user turn instead of injected as mid-conversation system messages; OpenAI configurations expose request options such as top-p, penalties, seed, stop sequences and reasoning effort.
• Admin: plugins can register external login providers, which appear as "Continue with" buttons on the login page and get their own settings group; model access is assigned in bulk from the Models tab; admin tabs grow with their content instead of clipping; the Users and Groups save footer shows only where there is something to save.
• Notifications: a bell in the sidebar opens a notification center with category filters and rows grouped by day; toasts stack to three, collapse bursts into one counted card and show a progress line.
• History: the keyword or semantic search mode moved into Filters with an active chip, so the toolbar no longer overlaps at narrow widths; compare labels read Original and Selected.
• ComfyUI: a backend accepts a hostname, an IPv4 or IPv6 address, host and port, or a full URL, with an HTTPS default setting; the Docker guide gains a Compose example running ComfyUI alongside PotionUI.
• Install: ffmpeg ships in every Docker image and doctor reports when it is missing; local .env files stay out of Docker build contexts.
• Reliability: every timestamp the API and websocket send carries its UTC offset; the fair scheduler orders jobs that arrive in the same instant by arrival instead of rotation; collection routes answer without a trailing slash and no longer redirect; the log viewer handles Windows line endings.
• Fixes: the tags picker closes on Escape wherever focus is; shortcut hints no longer leak into button names read by assistive technology; local presets are labelled custom on Windows; filesystem automation triggers report relative paths correctly; the SDXL detailer skips a detection whose detector model is missing instead of failing the generation; the chat memory panel resolves the active model; model index cleanup no longer aborts on rows without a local path.
• Upgrading: the SDXL starter recipe now installs Juggernaut XL v9 instead of the Pony checkpoint; integrations that call collection routes with a trailing slash must drop it, since the redirect is gone; a database migration adds external identities on first start.

0.0.6 / 0.0.7 — 2026-09-11

• Generate: presets can ship curated styles — a Styles button in the Prompt panel opens a picker with category filters, a text filter and Small/Big previews, and applying a style wraps the prompt with the style's opening and closing segments plus its negative, with a second pick replacing the first; Anima ships fifty styles with rendered previews; prompt weights like (red hair:1.3) are honored by the Qwen3, Qwen3-VL and Qwen2.5-VL text encoders (Klein, Krea-2, Qwen-Image, Anima, Z-Image); phrasebook chips animate when a value is shuffled or picked; the chat's Suggested change preview shows phrasebook and variable references as chips.
• Generate: the page stays smooth during a generation — status and preview updates are applied once per frame instead of once per sampling step, the presets list and plugin catalogs are fetched once at boot instead of twice, and the collapsed workbench is a labelled rail in both layouts; the Prompt panel toolbar reads at the app's text size.
• History and Library: drag a marquee, Shift-click a range, Ctrl-click to toggle and Ctrl+A to select the page, on both grids; Delete by criteria replaces Delete by tags — tags, older than N days or a date range, failed/cancelled only, without media files, keep favorites — with a live count; Compare gets Overlay with an opacity slider and Wipe with a draggable divider on full-resolution images plus a full-screen viewer; Compare, Stitch and Download work from the Library too, plugins can scope their tools to History, Library or both, and the Library can export a zip; Stitch results can be saved to the Library; grids resize without remounting their thumbnails.
• Chat: memory reflection saves to the preset a generation chat is about and to the plugin mode a plugin chat runs in, and only to global when you ask; long sessions open on their latest messages and load earlier ones as you scroll up, streamed replies are applied once per frame, and the transcript only follows the reply while you are at the bottom; Admin → Chat Sessions can clear every chat session.
• Admin: Housekeeping deletes generations by criteria across all users with a preview count; the Add Download modal picks the model type from a chip row and the destination from your real depot subfolders, nested ones included, with an inline New folder option, and the Downloads to hint follows the type; the model picker's download shows a spinner; Hugging Face downloads carry the provider's token.
• Recipes: starter recipes for Flux2 Klein, Krea-2, Qwen-Image, Anima, Wan 2.2, LTX-2, LTX-2.5, MiniMax-H3, MiniMax-Music3, SeedVR2 and TRELLIS.2 with official repositories; gated models are marked with their licence link; the first-generation step shows sampling progress and the result inline (image, video, audio or mesh); an installed model is recognised by hash even when it was filed under another type or folder.
• Native engine: the text encoder stays on the GPU after encoding when it fits, so back-to-back generations skip the reload; rotary tables are computed once per run for MiniMax-H3 and Krea-2; Krea-2 gains ER-SDE, DPM++ 2M SDE, DPM++ 3M and RES multistep samplers and a Beta schedule, and samplers and schedules are a plugin extension point; long-prompt attention stays on the memory-efficient kernel instead of running out of memory.
• Fixes: the model scanner no longer stops on an indexed model without a file path or when the models location is unset; a recipe download could land under a doubled models folder and go unfound by the first-generation step; tag popovers inside modals no longer stretch the modal; long option lists in chip popovers scroll; the phrasebook preview poll pauses while the tab is hidden; superseded model searches are cancelled instead of racing.
• Upgrading: style previews are rendered with python scripts/preset_styles_render.py <preset directory> — a preset's styles.yml declares the styles and a shared preview scene, and the script writes the previews into the preset's public/styles/ folder.

Recipes are easy way to install presets (models) through the admin panel. This feature will be much bigger with different recipes helping to maintain your instance.

• Native engine: LoRAs on fp8 checkpoints no longer slow sampling down — the adapter factors stay resident on the GPU and every adapter of a layer is applied to the layer's output in one fused step, so a stack of LoRAs costs a few percent instead of multiplying the step time; a LoRA file retrained in place is picked up on the next generation instead of the old version staying merged until the model reloads; parsed LoRA files are cached in RAM; each generation logs one line with LoRA load and apply timing.
• Native engine: a clip that looks too large for the card is no longer refused up front — the VRAM estimate only sizes how much of the model stays resident, the first sampling step recovers from an out-of-memory by reclaiming cache and streaming the model from RAM, and only a genuine failure reports what was actually free with a hint of what would fit; free VRAM is judged after the allocator's idle pool, so the clip after a large one is not refused for memory that was never taken.
• MiniMax-H3: video decode shows up as its own stage in the profile with chunk and tile counts, the tiles of a chunk decode as one batched pass, and the decode tile size is configurable per preset (256 reference, 512, or untiled).
• Recipes: recipes are their own feature with an Admin → Recipes page — the catalog with a readiness badge per recipe, a detail with steps, models and presets served, run history, and Install with live progress; the setup wizard uses the same runner; plugins can contribute recipe step kinds; the empty-state setup links on Generate, Models and the preset picker become Install models for admins; guided setup asks for the models location before any download.
• History: a Tools menu on the selection bar groups tools by category — Compare, Stitch and Download .zip — and plugins can add their own; Stitch composes the selected images into one PNG with a chosen layout, tile size and background and a pickable parameters strip, with a zoomable preview; previous/next navigation inside the generation details modal with arrow keys that continue across generations.
• Prompt segments: a segment can carry a prefix and a suffix joined byte-for-byte around its text, editable in the segment details and visible on the card; a preset can ship segment templates (per mode) that appear in the apply picker beside your own, and the current cards can be saved as your own Segment Template from the composer.
• Admin: Backups on System Settings > Storage — Backup now with the saved tier, the archive list, destination and retention, and the cron line for scheduled backups, backed by potionui backup and potionui restore with a consistent snapshot, a versioned manifest and a schema guard; Thumbnails panel with Compact, Balanced and Full profiles, disk usage estimates and a regenerate job; a housekeeping pass prunes storage/tmp by age and applies retention to run reports and LLM traces; an admin-only log tail of the rotating server log with a level filter.
• Reliability: one logging setup for every entry point with a size-rotated storage/logs/potionui.log and uvicorn lines folded in; credentials and validation input are kept out of request logs; model list and download endpoints no longer block the event loop during an index run; uploads carry a content hash and identical re-uploads reuse the existing file.
• Chat: memory no longer falls back silently to global scope and gains a mode scope; the chat shows when a conversation was started on another page's scope; MCP and chat model tools see exactly the models their user may access; Documentation gains a live MCP Tools reference.
• Plugins: the NVIDIA RTX upscale plugin ships in the marketplace; plugins can declare history tools and recipe step kinds; a plugin's ComfyUI pipe fails the generation with the field named instead of swallowing errors.
• Generate: the page no longer shows which backend runs a generation; the floating workbench keeps tooltips above its backdrop and swaps cleanly with the floating form; adding models to a collection refreshes the sidebar counts.
• Fixes: bundle import rewrites only declared model-reference fields; the inspiration detail modal updates its counts in place; download filenames from providers are contained; JSON search highlights render without raw HTML; NATIVE_TORCH_COMPILE accepts 1/true/yes.
• Upgrading: migration 024 adds prefix/suffix columns to the three segment tables; the server log moves to storage/logs/potionui.log (see README); the setup wizard's run responses gain a mode field.

Version 0.0.5 which is in development will bring up new section in generation history -> Tools. A context menu that is shown after selecting at least one media. With the new tool called "Stitch" - you can stitch multiple images together into one with optional params that will be rendered along with them.

• ComfyUI: the comfyui-backend plugin ships in the marketplace with five image presets (Qwen-Image, SDXL, Z-Image, Krea-2, Flux.2 Klein 9B) built on official ComfyUI templates with built-in nodes only, and Admin → Presets gains a workflow import wizard: paste an Export (API) workflow, design its form (tabs, rows, sections; a LoRA chain becomes a LoRA picker), check node and model requirements against your server, create the preset, and reopen, edit, reload or delete it later. An admin-only chat mode proposes form changes for approval.
• Chat becomes PotionAI: a floating shell with a history rail, mode, context and model header, tool-run transcript and memory inspector; approval and question docks share one anatomy; the Steps panel says why a tool was withheld; the assistant creates and changes prompt variables with your approval; cancelling a turn, closing the tab mid-stream or reloading never leaves a reply stuck; a model-aware context budget and a bounded memory reflection keep long conversations working, and a model without a declared context window is never refused a turn; native LLM thinking mode is detected and reported.
• Video Director shot console: a film runs as shots with per-shot prompt, keyframes, audio, LoRAs and references; a shot knows when it depends on its predecessor and can continue from that shot's last rendered frame; Wan, LTX and MiniMax-H3 timelines compile to the exact frame geometry the engine renders.
• Generate: a docked generation panel with status, context rail and session cluster; Q floats the form, W floats the workbench, H opens a Last generations drawer, S saves the session; the prompt segments editor gets the composer card with icon actions and a resolved-prompt panel; the running status names the backend that took the generation and why.
• Native engine: a run-scoped cache stops Flux, Krea-2, Qwen-Image, Z-Image and Wan 2.2 recomputing unchanged work every step; text encoders load only on a cache miss; fp8 weights take the fast scaled-matmul path even while streamed; cancelling is safe mid-run for SDXL, TRELLIS.2, SeedVR2 and RIFE; a LoRA with no effect is diagnosed instead of silently ignored; the host RAM reserve scales with the machine; an experimental MiniMax-H3 VDN preset adds hybrid attention.
• Presets and templating: the authoring guide is split into docs/presets/ with a tutorial that walks the real eight-pipe Z-Image chain, and two pages generated from code, docs/pipes.md (every pipe's name, inputs, outputs and configuration) and docs/preset-context.md (the template context, filters and vocabularies), kept in sync by docs_lint; preset_new.py --family scaffolds a family's real pipe chain; the linter checks pipeline.yml (pipe names, configuration keys, input wiring, per-variant fields, stale | default() literals) and preset_lint --render renders every mode through the real processor; the render context gains generation.profile and loses four unused roots; an u/config: typo is a load error; 866 dead form guards are gone from the shipped presets; a strip_model_dir filter replaces the ComfyUI presets' path-stripping chains; the Pipes and Output Types reference pages in Help → Documentation are complete and grouped by family.
• Fixes: generation history never records a model's internal path (existing rows migrated); applying a chat change to a segment with a phrasebook chip no longer shows the chip twice; the chained Wan video generator declares its NAG keys.
• Admin: presets declare requirements (nodes, model files, VRAM) that are checked per backend; the backend that runs a generation is always the router's decision, traceable in a Routing panel on each generation; per-backend queue scheduling can be fair across users; a backend's execution device comes from real hardware evidence; enabling a plugin rolls back cleanly on failure and a local plugin shadowing a marketplace one is flagged; plugin frontends ship minified.
• History: faster listing and counting, streamed zip and bundle exports, bounded run reports, and semantic search that shares one embedding client; bundle v2 records each model's type, filename, hash and path.
• Reliability: session save and load, downloads, collections, WebSocket reconnects and generation ownership all reject stale responses; request logs redact secrets; the service worker precaches only the shell.
• Logins ignore letter case for username and email.
• Upgrading: default ports are now 7680 (backend), 7681 (frontend) and 7690 (worker); the ComfyUI import accepts Export (API) JSON only; the Qwen-Image nunchaku variant, the Krea-2 enhancer and the Z-Image post-processing chain were removed; migration 018 refuses to apply while two accounts differ only by letter case.

I've started to work on the ComfyUI workflow import into the PotionUI. As administrator you will be able to easily & fast create a connection between PotionUI's forms system and ComfyUI workflow. User's won't ever need to see the nodes, only good old forms.

0.0.3 is out today, and it is the release where the "one box, many people" idea stops being a promise: you can now rent a GPU, point PotionUI at it, and generate on it from the same interface you use locally. Still alpha, still one person building it, still very much wanting people to break it.

What it is, in one paragraph. A self-hosted AI generation studio: SvelteKit front, FastAPI back, GPL-3.0, no telemetry, runs on your machine or your server. The core idea is presets: a preset is a small YAML package that says "here is the model and here is the exact form a person should see for it". Switching models means switching presets, not rebuilding a node graph. It is multi-user by design, with real accounts, admin and user roles, and per-user or per-group access to presets, models, and LLM configs.

What's new in 0.0.3

• Remote GPU workers. Add Backend now creates a remote worker, connects to one you run yourself, or provisions a RunPod pod for you (the provider ships as a plugin) with a live stage timeline. A heartbeat monitor watches the pod, pauses the backend when it stops, and Start brings it back. The Models tab lists exactly what is on the worker, with the depot path per file, and pushes missing models from your machine with per-file progress. Remote runs come back with the same previews, parameters, and media as local ones.
• Install profiles. The launcher offers local, hybrid, and remote installs, plus a worker subcommand for a GPU box that serves another instance.
• 3D generation. TRELLIS.2 image-to-mesh runs on the native engine. Meshes get automatic thumbnails, an interactive viewer in History (wireframe, materials, camera presets, screenshot), and a 3D media filter.
• LoRAs. Step-windowed LoRAs on Krea-2 apply only between the sampling steps you choose. Strength is shown as a recommended range in the picker. Model pickers now recommend downloadable variants (bf16, fp8, nvfp4, int8) across nine native families.
• Prompt library. Import styles.csv, Fooocus style JSON, wildcard YAML, plain lines, and image metadata (A1111, ComfyUI, InvokeAI) with auto-detection; export back to styles.csv; assign a prompt to a catalog model.
• Phrasebook. Find and replace across the whole phrasebook with highlighted matches and a preview before it runs; batch activate, deactivate, move, delete; a category panel with Overview and Preview-images tabs.
• Admin and mobile. Plugins and Downloads are master-detail lists, Backends remembers where you were in the URL, a saved provider API key applies immediately, Generate on a phone is a proper camera-style view with sheets, and modals fit the screen.
• Plus: pasting an image into the assistant attaches it, a New workspace button that asks before discarding, Inspirations laid out in justified rows.

What it does today

• Generation is the product. Image families: SDXL, Flux 1 / Flux 2 Klein, Qwen-Image (including editing), Krea-2, Z-Image, Anima. Video: Wan 2.1/2.2, LTX-2 / 2.3 / 2.5 with native audio, MiniMax-H3. Audio: MiniMax-Music3. Upscale and restore: SeedVR2. Each model gets its own tuned form: the right resolutions, samplers, LoRA stack, and speed profiles (Draft / Standard / Max) as one control. Several workspace tabs run side by side, each with its own preset, prompt, and results. Progress shows the actual pipeline step and streams previews as the image refines; close the tab, come back, the run is still there. 

• History that remembers everything. Every generation is saved with its exact prompt composition, preset and version, models, and parameters. Filter by date, type, preset, tags, or "used this phrasebook value". One click reuses the full setup in a new tab. Nested collections, tags, favorites, keyword or semantic search, and a personal library for the keepers. 

• A prompt editor that is not a textbox. Prompts are ordered segment cards you can reorder, disable, name, and color. Dynamic prompts ({a|b}, weights, ${variables}) reseed per image so results stay reproducible. The phrasebook is your own autocomplete dictionary: type # and shot types, lighting, palettes drop in as chips, with per-chip shuffle and a preview render per value. Saved prompts, segments, and templates live in their own library. 

• Video and Music Directors. Compose a video as shots, keyframes, and audio tracks on a timeline instead of one giant prompt; write a song as verses and choruses and let the compiler produce the tagged lyrics MiniMax-Music3 wants.
• An assistant, if you want one. Point it at Ollama, an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or Anthropic. It reads the active tab, rewrites segments, edits the phrasebook, adjusts form values, and every change stops at an approval step first. The same tools are exposed over MCP with per-user tokens, so Claude Desktop or your own agent can drive your instance. 

• Built for more than one person. Accounts, groups, per-user preset and model access, per-mode form overrides (change defaults, lock or hide fields, no YAML), a backends list that mixes local, and remote workers, a download manager, a stats dashboard, and visual automations (triggers, conditions, actions) for things like freeing VRAM before the LLM needs it.
• Plugins for nearly everything. Providers (CivitAI, Hugging Face), backends, pipes, field types, chat modes, automation nodes, pages.

Requirements. Linux x86_64 with an NVIDIA GPU is the tested platform; Windows can be tested through WSL2 or Docker; there is a Docker image on GHCR.

8 GB VRAM and 16 GB RAM is the floor for the SDXL family, larger families need more.

The ask. I would rather steer this toward what people actually want than guess. Two things help most: tell me which model or workflow you are missing, and pull a test build and break it before it ships. The Discord is where that happens: https://discord.gg/avR4trp3b8. Repo: https://github.com/PotionUI/PotionUI. I will answer questions here too.