Faithlife: are you planning to increase the number of features that rely on being online?

Francis · 2025-07-18T13:09:38+00:00

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Yesterday I took my laptop to the kitchen table to do some work and was not connected. I was surprised to see that Lemma in Passage did not work offline. Is the number of features that require being online increasing and is the plan to keep increasing those?

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DMB

Recognize you don't need inane comments.

But I'm an off-liner, so I see the issue regularly. Paid features 'inaccessible'.

OTOH I also recognize there must be significant FL savings initially, and maintenance-wise, in server supplied features … desktop, web, and mobile.

Sort of a contest between customers wanting platform parity, vs off-liners wanting support. I imagine, with AI and subscriptions, the former will be the future recipients.

Bradley Grainger (Logos)

For each new feature and improvement, we'll make the decision of whether it should be online or offline. Factors that might push us to making an online feature include (but are not limited to):

Does it use a large or frequently-updated database, particularly one that includes both locked and unlocked books? (Lemma in Passage and Bible Browser are in this category, as is Smart Search)
Does it require a sizable or proprietary Large Language Model? (Smart Bible Search, Search Synopsis)
Does it need to support web or mobile devices that don't have the whole library downloaded? (Online Factbook sections)

Is the number of features that require being online increasing and is the plan to keep increasing those?

I mean… almost tautologically, yes, because not increasing the number of online features would mean never developing a single new one?

FWIW, I think we were clear (at least in the forums) that Lemma in Passage was an online feature from the beginning, but it looks like it might be missing "[Net]" in the Help File, which might be contributing to some confusion. I'll pass that error report along.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/842543#Comment_842543

Thomas Glen Leo

I hugely appreciate the extent to which Logos works offline. I have my entire library downloaded to my laptop. I get that there are features that are available only online, but on a recent pair of overseas flights I truly appreciated being able to work in Logos offline. So thank you to Logos for keeping an eye on balancing the usefulness of a robust set of offline features with the need for some features to require online access.

Tony

Could potentially give the option of running an LLM locally for users with powerful gpu and lots of ram for some extra offline functionality. Maybe with different options depending on resources.