Recognize local vision models so their images aren't dropped (#185)

An image attachment only got through if the model name was on a short
built-in list. Anything else was treated as text-only and the image was
quietly dropped, so the model never saw it. That left out a lot of the
smaller vision models you can run locally (moondream was the one I hit).

Pulled the check into is_vision_model() in chat_helpers, broadened it to
cover those, and added a test. Models that already worked are unaffected.

Fixes #124.

src/chat_handler.py

@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ from src.constants import (
     UPLOAD_DIR,
 )
 from core.models import ChatMessage
-from src.chat_helpers import extract_urls
+from src.chat_helpers import extract_urls, is_vision_model
 from src.document_processor import build_user_content, analyze_image_with_vl_result
 from src.youtube_handler import (
     is_youtube_url,
@@ -147,17 +147,7 @@ class ChatHandler:
         # Analyze images — skip if vision disabled, or if main model is vision-capable
         from src.settings import get_setting
         vision_enabled = get_setting("vision_enabled", True)
-        VISION_KEYWORDS = [
-            "gpt-4o", "gpt-4.1", "gpt-4.5", "gpt-4-turbo", "gpt-4-vision",
-            "claude-sonnet", "claude-opus", "claude-haiku",
-            "gemini", "llava", "pixtral", "qwen2-vl", "qwen-vl", "qwen3-vl", "qwen3vl", "minicpm",
-        ]
-        main_model = (sess.model or "").lower()
-        main_is_vision = any(kw in main_model for kw in VISION_KEYWORDS)
-        # Also match models with "vl" in the name (e.g. Qwen3VL, InternVL, any *-VL-*)
-        if not main_is_vision:
-            import re
-            main_is_vision = bool(re.search(r'\dvl|vl\d|[-_]vl[-_.\d]|vl-', main_model))
+        main_is_vision = is_vision_model(sess.model or "")
 
         # Read uploads DB once and index by id (was read twice + linear-scanned per attachment)
         files_by_id: Dict[str, Dict] = {}

src/chat_helpers.py

@@ -23,6 +23,36 @@ def extract_urls(text: str) -> List[str]:
     return cleaned_urls
 
 
+# Model-name substrings that signal native image input. A missed match here
+# silently drops the image from the chat request (it gets swapped for a text
+# caption), so the model never sees it. Keep this broad, especially for local
+# models (Ollama/llama.cpp) that ship under many names. See issue #124.
+_VISION_MODEL_KEYWORDS = (
+    # hosted
+    "gpt-4o", "gpt-4.1", "gpt-4.5", "gpt-4-turbo", "gpt-4-vision",
+    "claude-sonnet", "claude-opus", "claude-haiku", "gemini",
+    # open / local
+    "vision", "llava", "bakllava", "moondream", "pixtral", "minicpm",
+    "internvl", "cogvlm", "qwen-vl", "qwen2-vl", "qwen3-vl", "qwen3vl",
+)
+# Catches the "*-VL-*" / "*VL*" family not covered by a literal keyword above
+# (e.g. Qwen2.5-VL and various tags): a standalone "vl" token, plus "vlm".
+_VISION_VL_RE = re.compile(r'(?<![a-z])vl(?![a-z])|vlm')
+
+
+def is_vision_model(model_name: str) -> bool:
+    """Best-effort check of whether a model can natively accept images.
+
+    Decides whether image attachments get passed through to the model or
+    swapped for a separate caption. Err toward True, since a false negative
+    drops the image entirely. See issue #124.
+    """
+    m = (model_name or "").lower()
+    if any(kw in m for kw in _VISION_MODEL_KEYWORDS):
+        return True
+    return bool(_VISION_VL_RE.search(m))
+
+
 def validate_message(message: str) -> str:
     """Validate message input."""
     if not message:

tests/test_vision_model_detection.py

@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+"""Tests for is_vision_model (issue #124).
+
+Local vision models served through Ollama/llama.cpp show up under many
+names. If one isn't recognized as vision-capable, the image attachment is
+stripped from the request before it reaches the model, so it silently never
+sees the picture.
+"""
+from src.chat_helpers import is_vision_model
+
+
+def test_recognizes_local_and_hosted_vision_models():
+    for name in [
+        # the ones #124 missed
+        "moondream", "moondream:latest",
+        "llama3.2-vision:11b", "granite3.2-vision",
+        "qwen2.5-vl:7b", "qwen2.5vl", "internvl2.5", "cogvlm",
+        # already worked, keep them working
+        "llava", "llava:7b", "bakllava", "minicpm-v",
+        "gpt-4o", "claude-sonnet-4", "gemini-2.0-flash", "pixtral-12b",
+    ]:
+        assert is_vision_model(name), f"{name!r} should be detected as vision-capable"
+
+
+def test_text_only_models_not_flagged():
+    for name in ["qwen2.5:3b", "mistral", "llama3.1:8b", "deepseek-r1", "phi3", "vicuna", ""]:
+        assert not is_vision_model(name), f"{name!r} should not be flagged as vision"
+
+
+def test_none_is_safe():
+    assert is_vision_model(None) is False