snipe-cli 0.1.1

CLI and Python package for bird photo detection, species classification, and XMP region tagging.

Detect birds in JPGs or common RAW formats (NEF/CR2/ARW/CR3/DNG), tag them with accurate species labels, and write MWG region metadata.

✨ Key Features

• Out-of-the-box usage on CPU with a simple local install and a smaller package footprint because models are downloaded on demand instead of bundled.
• High-performance prediction on GPU when using [gpu] extras.
• High classification accuracy tuned for bird photography workflows.
• No extra library storage layer: Snipe writes EXIF/XMP metadata only, so it works seamlessly with Lightroom and other photo management tools that support XMP metadata.

Quick Start

pipx install "snipe-cli[cpu]"
# init will create default config and download models.
snipe init
snipe ./path/to/photos

Install

Prerequisites:

• Python 3.12 or newer.
• ONNX models are downloaded on demand into the user model cache: Windows %APPDATA%\.snipe\models, Linux/macOS ~/.config/.snipe/models.
• Labels, taxonomy, and GPS filter data remain packaged under snipe/resources/.

Install from PyPI with pipx:

pipx install "snipe-cli[cpu]"

If pipx is not using Python 3.12+, select the interpreter explicitly:

pipx install --python python3.12 "snipe-cli[cpu]"

Install from PyPI with pip:

python -m pip install "snipe-cli[cpu]"

For the GPU runtime build, install snipe-cli[gpu] instead.

Install from source:

git clone https://github.com/woolen-sheep/snipe.git
cd snipe
uv sync --extra cpu

After syncing from source, activate the virtual environment or prefix runtime commands with uv run while working from the checkout.

For the GPU runtime build from source, install with:

uv sync --extra gpu

Snipe ships as a single package. The cpu extra installs onnxruntime, while the gpu extra installs onnxruntime-gpu.

Run snipe init once if you want to create the default config file and pre-download the managed detector/classifier models before the first processing run.

At runtime Snipe detects which ONNX Runtime package is installed and prefers CUDAExecutionProvider automatically when the GPU package and CUDA runtime dependencies are available. If CUDA cannot be initialized, Snipe falls back to CPUExecutionProvider.

The gpu extra does not bundle NVIDIA system libraries by itself. You still need a compatible local CUDA Toolkit and cuDNN installation for onnxruntime-gpu.

For the GPU extra on Windows, make sure the system runtime dependencies required by your onnxruntime-gpu build are installed and visible on PATH. The current setup was validated with CUDA 12 and cuDNN 9.

Config File

Most workflows do not require a config file. Run snipe init to create the default config file and download the managed models. Snipe reads its default config from:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\.snipe\config.yaml
• Linux/macOS: ~/.config/.snipe/config.yaml

Managed models are stored separately under:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\.snipe\models
• Linux/macOS: ~/.config/.snipe/models

For a full example configuration, see config.example.yaml.

You can also keep a config file anywhere and pass it explicitly:

snipe --config .\config.example.yaml .\photos

Detailed Usage

Core commands:

snipe <file-or-directory> [options]
snipe init
snipe clear <directory> [--workers N]
snipe preview <file-or-directory>
python -m snipe <file-or-directory> [options]

Output

• Adds classification labels to XMP:Subject and XMP:HierarchicalSubject.
• Writes each bird crop as an mwg-rs:RegionList entry with normalized rectangle coordinates.

Preview Mode

• snipe preview <path> opens a pywebview window that shows one image at a time.
• Uses arrow keys or on-screen buttons to move between images; scroll to zoom and drag to pan.
• Reads XMP MWG Region metadata and overlays boxes and labels on top of the image.

Clear Mode

• snipe clear <directory> removes only the XMP fields managed by Snipe from supported images under that directory.
• The clear command writes empty keyword and MWG region values through exifmwg so the clear behavior can be validated against real files.
• The command accepts a directory path only, supports --workers for parallel clears, and logs each clear normally.

Key Options

• -o, --output-dir copy images there before tagging; omit to write in place.
• Supports JPG plus RAW files such as .nef, .cr2, .cr3, .arw, .orf, .rw2, .raf, .dng, .pef, .sr2.
• --conf confidence threshold for bird detection (default 0.35).
• --workers number of parallel threads.
• --detector-model path to a local YOLO ONNX detector model; omit it to use the managed model downloaded into the user cache.
• --detector-merge-overlap-threshold overlap ratio used by the detector post-processing merge heuristic (default 0.7).
• --detector-min-box-area-ratio minimum box area as a fraction of the largest detected box; smaller boxes are dropped (default 0.05).
• --gps-filter/--no-gps-filter enable or disable GPS-based species filtering (default enabled).
• --gps-filter-data path to the JSON GPS filter data used for in-memory species filtering.
• --region-filter force filtering by a specific region code such as CN or CN-11; this implies location filtering automatically.
• --language common-name language enum; supported values are CN and US (default CN).
• --classifier-model path to the ONNX classifier.
• --labels labels file for classification.
• --taxonomy path to the merged common-name CSV with COMMON_NAME_ZH_CN and COMMON_NAME_US columns.
• init creates the default config if missing and downloads the managed ONNX models if they are missing or fail checksum validation.
• --log-level logging level; leave it unset or set it to null/none in process mode to use the cross-worker tqdm progress UI instead of log lines.
• --dry-run skip EXIF writes while running detection/classification.

Python API

Snipe also exposes an importable API for single-image inference. The public entrypoint returns a typed list[BirdDetection] and supports both region_code and language_code parameters.

from snipe import detect_birds

results = detect_birds(
	r"D:\photos\bird.jpg",
	region_code="CN",
	language_code="CN",
)

for item in results:
	print(item.bird_name, item.species_code, item.score, item.bbox.as_tuple())

API notes:

• detect_birds(...) accepts a local file path, raw image bytes, io.BytesIO or another binary file-like object, a PIL.Image.Image, a numpy.ndarray RGB image, or a file:// / http(s):// URL.
• Each BirdDetection item contains bird_name, species_code, score, bbox, image_width, and image_height.
• bbox is a typed BoundingBox object with left, top, right, bottom, width, height, and as_tuple().
• When image is a local file path or file:// URL and region_code is omitted, the API can use embedded GPS metadata for species filtering just like the CLI.

Developer Notes

Project Layout

• Runtime package code lives under snipe/.
• Packaged runtime support assets live under snipe/resources/ and snipe/web/.
• Repository-level data/ is kept as editable source/reference input for now.
• Local ONNX model source files live under local_models/ and are published separately through GitHub Releases.
• Developer helper scripts live under tools/.

Runtime Notes

• Detector and classifier ONNX models are downloaded lazily from the dedicated model release tag into the user model cache when they are missing.
• ONNX Runtime provider selection is automatic: snipe-cli[cpu] runs on CPUExecutionProvider, while snipe-cli[gpu] attempts CUDAExecutionProvider first and falls back to CPU if the CUDA stack is unavailable.
• GPS species filtering uses the packaged snipe/resources/location_species_filter.json artifact and preloads the filter data into memory at startup.

YOLO ONNX Export

If you need to convert local .pt YOLO weights into ONNX files, use the tool script with temporary export-time dependencies:

uv run --with ultralytics --with onnx python tools/export_yolo_onnx.py