Downloaded models
The smart selection tools, the depth tools and Noise Reduction's Model method run machine-learning models. None of them ships in the installer: each is downloaded only when you ask, verified against a checksum pinned in the app before it is trusted, and kept in Heeler's data folder. Every model runs on your machine; nothing in your photographs is sent anywhere.
The models
| Model | Used by | Size |
|---|---|---|
| Segment Anything (MobileSAM) | Smart selection by click | 37 MB |
| BiRefNet Lite | The subject one-shot matte | 224 MB |
| LaMa | Remove and the Finish Fill layer | 208 MB |
| ViTMatte | Selection Polish | 104 MB |
| Depth Anything V2 Small | Fog, Depth Lighting, Depth of Field, depth masks and depth-range selections | 99 MB |
| SCUNet | Noise Reduction's Model method | 77 MB |
Their licences and origins are on the open-source page.
Installing
A tool that needs a model it does not have shows a card naming the model, its size, its licence and where it comes from, with a DOWNLOAD button. Nothing is fetched until you press it.
Preferences, Models lists every model with its status and version. A model not yet installed has an INSTALL button there, which opens the same card, so you can fetch a model ahead of a shoot rather than at the moment a tool first asks. REMOVE frees a model's disk space; its tool asks again the next time it needs it.
Every model has two sources: where its authors published it, and a mirror of the same files on Vagabond Burro's own release page. The download tries the first and falls back to the second; the checksum is the same, so it does not matter which one answered.
Updating
CHECK FOR MODEL UPDATES asks a vetted model list published with Heeler's releases whether newer weights exist for any model installed here. Nothing is followed from the models' own upstream pages automatically: an entry reaches the list only after Vagabond Burro has run those weights through Heeler's tests. A model with newer weights is listed with both versions, the download size and a note, and UPDATE downloads it over the copy in place through the same checked path. Before the first release that carries the list, the check says so.
Where they live
The Location row shows the folder the models are kept in and lets you choose another, on an external drive for instance. With models already installed, choosing a new folder offers to move them. The rasters the models compute (depth planes, mattes, the noise model's answers) are caches, kept beside the catalog's other caches and cleared from Preferences, Storage; the models themselves are not touched by that.