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Online and Mixed Modes

How Online Mode and Mixed Mode process Sets, what switching changes, and what Mixed Mode does and does not keep local

pinakea has two AI modes for Sets: Online Mode and Mixed Mode. This page explains what each mode does, what changes when you switch, and what Mixed Mode does and does not keep local.

Deciding which mode to use?

Read Why Online Mode is recommended for most Sets. That blog post is the current recommendation. This page is the reference for how the modes behave.

Set scope

AI mode is stored per Set. Your OpenRouter API key is global and shared across Sets. The bundled Demo Set is fixed to Online Mode because its sample content is already preprocessed. Use or create another Set to try Mixed Mode.

Current Recommendation

Online Mode is the recommended default for new, larger, or growing Sets. Mixed Mode is for smaller Sets when avoiding OpenRouter cost for automatic item processing matters more than speed and output quality.

pinakea uses around 1,000 items per Set as practical guidance for Mixed Mode. This is not a hard limit. If you are unsure, choose Online Mode.

What Runs Where

TaskOnline ModeMixed Mode
EmbeddingsOpenRouterLocal on your Mac
Short summariesOpenRouterLocal on your Mac
AI titlesOpenRouterLocal on your Mac
AI tagsOpenRouterLocal on your Mac
ChatOpenRouterOpenRouter
Longer summariesOpenRouterOpenRouter
AI tag consolidationOpenRouterOpenRouter

Online Mode sends automatic item processing through OpenRouter to cloud AI providers. Mixed Mode runs embeddings, short summaries, AI titles, and AI tags locally on supported Apple Silicon Macs.

Chat, longer summaries, and AI tag consolidation still use OpenRouter in both modes.

What Mixed Mode Means

Mixed Mode keeps automatic item processing local for the high-volume pipeline stages: embeddings, short summaries, AI titles, and AI tags. Its main benefit is avoiding OpenRouter cost for those automatic stages.

Mixed Mode is not a fully local, fully private, or fully offline mode. If you chat with a Set, generate longer summaries, or consolidate AI tags, relevant content still goes through OpenRouter.

You can use Mixed Mode with an OpenRouter API key. That hybrid setup keeps automatic item processing local while enabling chat and longer summaries through OpenRouter. It can make sense for a small Set where OpenRouter item-processing cost matters, but it does not make pinakea fully local.

Quality, Speed, And Mac Load

Mixed Mode is slower than Online Mode because your Mac does the automatic item processing locally and sequentially. Larger Sets can take hours or days to catch up.

While Mixed Mode is processing, your Mac can get hot, drain battery faster, and feel less responsive. Keep it plugged into power during significant local processing.

Mixed Mode also uses smaller local models:

  • Local embeddings are weaker than the Online Mode embedding path, which can affect semantic search and retrieval quality.
  • Local short summaries are weaker because local models have less capability and a smaller context window.
  • Local AI titles and AI tags can be less accurate because the local model understands the content less well.

A Set is not fully useful until its processing has caught up. Search quality, summaries, titles, and tags depend on completed pipeline work.

Switching Modes

Switch modes in Settings -> AI. Switching is per Set and triggers reprocessing because Online Mode and Mixed Mode use different embedding paths.

When switching Online Mode -> Mixed Mode:

  • Online embeddings generated with OpenRouter credit are replaced.
  • Those embeddings cannot be reused in Mixed Mode.
  • Existing summaries, titles, and tags are kept.
  • For a populated Set at or above the recommended guidance point, Stay Online is the recommended action.

When switching Mixed Mode -> Online Mode:

  • Local embeddings, AI-generated summaries, AI-generated titles, and LLM tags are cleared.
  • Online Mode regenerates them through OpenRouter.
  • That regeneration uses OpenRouter credit.

Starred items and explicit user tags are preserved when switching modes.

Background Processing

AI mode and Background processing are stored per Set.

In Mixed Mode, each Set can choose how local processing behaves while pinakea is in the background: Stop, Throttled, or Full.

In Online Mode, pinakea behaves as Full while backgrounded. The Background processing control is shown disabled in Online Mode, but pinakea preserves the Set’s saved Mixed Mode preference for later switches.

Warnings And Thresholds

When you add a filesystem source to a Mixed Mode Set, pinakea estimates whether the Set will cross the recommended 1,000-item guidance point. If so, it warns before adding the source and offers a direct path to AI Settings.

For sources that cannot be reliably preflighted, pinakea checks after new items land. The warning is shown once per Set and threshold so it does not keep repeating after you have seen it.

These warnings are guidance, not a hard block. They exist because larger Mixed Mode Sets can take much longer to process locally and produce lower-quality automatic results.

Status And Local Helper

Mixed Mode uses a local AI helper for local model work. Helper transitions are normal during local processing, especially after pause/resume, background changes, repair flows, or responsiveness protection while you interact with the timeline.

The status bar Local AI indicator shows whether the helper is starting, ready, recovering, or in an issue state.