---
name: "Run self-hosted media research and RAG workflows with tldw_server"
slug: "run-self-hosted-media-research-and-rag-workflows-with-tldw-server"
description: "Use tldw_server when an agent workflow needs to ingest video, audio, documents, and web pages into a local research layer with RAG, evals, OpenAI-compatible APIs, and MCP access."
github_stars: 1410
verification: "security_reviewed"
source: "https://github.com/rmusser01/tldw_server"
author: "rmusser01"
publisher_type: "independent_open_source"
category: "Research & Scraping"
framework: "MCP"
tool_ecosystem:
  github_repo: "rmusser01/tldw_server"
  github_stars: 1410
---

# Run self-hosted media research and RAG workflows with tldw_server

Use tldw_server when an agent workflow needs to ingest video, audio, documents, and web pages into a local research layer with RAG, evals, OpenAI-compatible APIs, and MCP access.

## Prerequisites

Python 3.10+, ffmpeg, Docker or local Python setup, tldw_server, optional LLM/STT/TTS providers, optional MCP client

## Installation

Requirements and caveats from upstream:
- We analyze the performance of language models on two tasks that require identifying relevant information in their input contexts: multi-document question answering and key-value retrieval. We find that performance can...

Basic usage or getting-started notes:
- Can be used to run LLMs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS with a single binary wrapper around Llama.cpp.
- For commercial API usage for use with this project: GPT-5.1, Anthropic's models(The Temu of AI services/models), Kimi k2, DeepSeek
- 2025 Nov: I would say service quality has improved enough to the point where it can make sense to use a 'premium' subscription/usage of API services without expecting to be screwed 7-8/10 times.

- Source: https://github.com/rmusser01/tldw_server
- Extracted from upstream docs: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rmusser01/tldw_server/HEAD/README.md

## Documentation

- https://tldwproject.com

## Source

- [Agent Skill Exchange](https://agentskillexchange.com/skills/run-self-hosted-media-research-and-rag-workflows-with-tldw-server/)