// the find
VERT-sh/VERT
The next-generation file converter. Open source, fully local* and free forever.
VERT is a browser-based file converter that runs FFmpeg, ImageMagick, and Pandoc via WebAssembly, so conversions happen locally without uploading anything to a server. It supports 250+ formats across images, documents, and audio. Video conversion is the asterisk — it requires a separate self-hosted daemon (vertd) because running FFmpeg for video in-browser is too slow to be practical.
The WASM approach is genuinely well-executed: shipping FFmpeg, ImageMagick, and Pandoc as WASM modules in a single SvelteKit app is non-trivial and they've pulled it off cleanly. The converter abstraction (src/lib/converters/) is cleanly separated per tool, making it easy to follow which code path handles which format. i18n coverage is solid — 15 languages with a proper inlang setup, not just English with a half-finished translation PR. Docker + nginx configs are included and look production-ready, so self-hosting is actually straightforward.
The 'fully local' headline is misleading until you read the footnote — video conversion silently falls back to a remote server on the official instance unless you run vertd yourself, which most users won't. WASM binary sizes for FFmpeg and ImageMagick are going to be large (often 30–60MB+), and there's no mention of how load time or caching is handled for repeat visits. The service worker (static/sw.js) is a single static file rather than a generated Workbox output, which suggests caching strategy may be hand-rolled and fragile. No test suite visible anywhere in the tree — for a project handling 250+ format conversion paths, that's a gap that will hurt as contributors add format support.