Faster Whisper Local Service

Provision a local STT backend used by voice skills.

What this sets up

• Python venv for faster-whisper
• transcribe-server.py HTTP endpoint at http://127.0.0.1:18790/transcribe
• systemd user service: openclaw-transcribe.service

Important: Model download on first run

On first startup, faster-whisper downloads model weights from Hugging Face (~1.5 GB for medium). This requires internet access and disk space. After the initial download, models are cached locally and the service runs fully offline.