Images of messages (pasted images, screenshots, generated images) were base64
inside the message JSON, so opening a chat downloaded all of them at once
(66 MB for a chat with 120 screenshots). They now live in a `blobs` table,
addressed by SHA-256; messages keep a reference (blob, size). The UI loads
them from /api/blobs/<hash> lazily with an immutable cache header, the runner
fills the bytes in before model requests, JSON exports stay self-contained.
- Store::add_message moves inline images out; large opaque PNGs become JPEG
(q85) when smaller. Older chats are converted once at start-up in the
background, unused images are removed (also after deleting a chat) and the
database is vacuumed when that frees 32 MB or more.
- Responses are compressed with gzip/brotli (not images, SSE streams or
binary downloads).
Example (copy of production): chat load 66 MB -> 1.5 MB (370 KB brotli),
database 90 MB -> 27 MB.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Richard ZinkandClaude Opus 5.5
e8e455b779