GenAI: add ability to save JPGs sent to provider

[leccelecce]

Proposed change

This adds a config option save_thumbnails to GenAI config, which will write JPGs out to the clips directory. It's disabled by default.

Purpose is to help debug GenAI results. I'm already seeing some interesting things like multiple blank thumbnails being sent.

Type of change

• Dependency upgrade
• Bugfix (non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New feature
• Breaking change (fix/feature causing existing functionality to break)
• Code quality improvements to existing code
• Documentation Update

Additional information

• This PR fixes or closes issue: fixes #
• This PR is related to issue:

Checklist

• The code change is tested and works locally.
• Local tests pass. Your PR cannot be merged unless tests pass
• There is no commented out code in this PR.
• The code has been formatted using Ruff (ruff format frigate)

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[hawkeye217]

Curious what the other maintainers would say, but this is more of a debug feature in my opinion and shouldn't be user-facing through the config because it has the potential to write a lot of images with no automated cleanup mechanism.

Perhaps it can be something like our object track debugging code, which can just be set to True in code.

frigate/frigate/video.py

Line 758 in 87e7b62

# debug object tracking

[leccelecce]

Thank you for the review. I see what you mean. Code changes are a bit of a barrier for most though.

Is there any other middle ground perhaps for enabling debugging, like env vars or a command line flag?

[leccelecce]

If a key concern is leaving leftovers files, happy to look at implementing a clean-up when events are expired so they don't build up.

[NickM-27]

In my opinion this is a bit different than Frigate's internal debug because the user doesn't have much control over Frigate's internal object tracking behaviors while a user has direct control over their preferred genai provider and its prompt.

This is something that most users won't be using, especially after things are working in a satisfactory manner. This is a debug capability as opposed to an additional UI / object information feature. Personally, I think it makes most sense as:

• the config option renamed to explicitly designate it as a debug option
• instead of some event or time based retention, change the config option to be an integer for the number of "thumbnail stacks" to keep. So that way as a user I can specify I want to keep the last 2 sets of thumbnails that were sent so that I can investigate.

[NickM-27]

I'd also be fine if it wasn't cleaned up by default, but with the option designated as a debug feature it will be more clear that this is a user function and not a default frigate function

[hawkeye217]

I'd also be fine if it wasn't cleaned up by default, but with the option designated as a debug feature it will be more clear that this is a user function and not a default frigate function

I'm fine with that too.

I'd also prefer to leave it out of the main genai docs and only keep it in the reference config, like other options we provide.