~/.local/share/rekody/models/ (override with $REKODY_MODEL_DIR). Every download is verified against a SHA-256 hash pinned in the binary; on a mismatch the file is deleted and, where a fallback source exists, the fallback is tried. Nothing unverified is left on disk.
Serving repositories
The Rekody mirror is tried first for every Whisper artifact so availability stays under Rekody’s control; an upstream rename or removal cannot break onboarding. Both repos serve identical bytes, so the same pinned checksum is enforced no matter which source serves the file. The daemon prints which source it downloaded from.
Streaming model files
Thenemotron engine loads three files from models/nemotron-en-int8/, all pinned:
The same hashes are published in the model repo’s
SHA256SUMS, so you can verify independently:
Whisper model files
On Apple Silicon, a matching Core ML encoder archive (
ggml-<size>-encoder.mlmodelc.zip) is downloaded, verified against its own pinned hash, and unzipped next to the model.
All pinned hashes live in crates/rekody-core/src/onboarding.rs (EXPECTED_CHECKSUMS), with the date they were last verified.
Release binaries too
Model files are not the only artifacts verified:rekody update checks the release tarball against the SHA256SUMS file published with every GitHub release before extracting it.
Licenses
- The CLI is MIT.
- The streaming model ships under two licenses, and users must comply with both:
- The conversion work (the int8 quantization, packaging, and benchmarking) is licensed under the PolyForm Shield License 1.0.0. PolyForm Shield is a noncompete license: any use is permitted except providing a product that competes with the software or with the licensor’s products built on it.
- The base model weights remain licensed by NVIDIA Corporation under the NVIDIA Open Model License. The model repo carries the
NOTICEfile and a dated copy of the license.
- Whisper models are the whisper.cpp GGML conversions of OpenAI’s Whisper weights (MIT), mirrored byte-for-byte.