diff --git a/claude_desktop/CHANGELOG.md b/claude_desktop/CHANGELOG.md
index 970d50d0a4..d24ce18659 100644
--- a/claude_desktop/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/claude_desktop/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 ## 1.27 (15-07-2026)
 
 - Route Claude Desktop cowork/local-agent-mode sessions through the Headroom proxy. Desktop spawns its bundled Claude Code binary at an absolute path (bypassing the add-on's PATH wrapper) with `ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL` pinned to the production endpoint, so those sessions never produced proxy savings. The add-on now manages `env.ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL` in `~/.claude/settings.json` — settings `env` entries replace inherited environment values at CLI startup — gated on `headroom_wrap_claude_code` and never overwriting a user-customized endpoint.
-- Fix Headroom's Kompress compression engine never activating, which made even proxied traffic record zero token savings (e.g. 175 requests, 0 saved). The proxy's startup preload is deliberately cache-only, but the HuggingFace model cache defaulted to `~/.cache` — tmpfs in this add-on, wiped every restart — so the ONNX model (plus the separately fetched `answerdotai/ModernBERT-base` tokenizer) was never cached and the engine idled in "deferred" mode forever, misleadingly logged as `Kompress: not installed`. `svc-headroom` now points `HF_HOME` at persistent storage (`~/.headroom/hf`, ~270 MB) and pre-warms the cache once at startup (bounded at 300 s, so an offline install still starts the proxy in pass-through mode and retries next boot). The already-installed `proxy` extra's ONNX runtime is sufficient — the multi-gigabyte PyTorch `ml` extra is deliberately not installed.
+- Fix Headroom's Kompress compression engine never activating, which made even proxied traffic record zero token savings (e.g. 175 requests, 0 saved). The proxy's startup preload is deliberately cache-only, but the HuggingFace model cache defaulted to `~/.cache` — tmpfs in this add-on, wiped every restart — so the ONNX model (plus the separately fetched `answerdotai/ModernBERT-base` tokenizer) was never cached and the engine idled in "deferred" mode forever, misleadingly logged as `Kompress: not installed`. `svc-headroom` now points `HF_HOME` at persistent storage (`~/.headroom/hf`, ~270 MB); the proxy's own request path already downloads a missing model in the background on first use and passes requests through uncompressed until it lands, so no blocking startup pre-warm is needed — the port binds immediately either way, and Kompress activates within the first couple of requests on the first boot, then loads instantly on every boot after. The already-installed `proxy` extra's ONNX runtime is sufficient — the multi-gigabyte PyTorch `ml` extra is deliberately not installed.
 
 ## 1.26 (15-07-2026)
 
diff --git a/claude_desktop/rootfs/etc/s6-overlay/s6-rc.d/svc-headroom/run b/claude_desktop/rootfs/etc/s6-overlay/s6-rc.d/svc-headroom/run
index 2119c40834..f1dcbcbd98 100755
--- a/claude_desktop/rootfs/etc/s6-overlay/s6-rc.d/svc-headroom/run
+++ b/claude_desktop/rootfs/etc/s6-overlay/s6-rc.d/svc-headroom/run
@@ -13,24 +13,18 @@ if bashio::config.true 'install_headroom' && command -v headroom > /dev/null 2>&
     # Kompress (the ONNX compression engine) needs its model in the local HF cache: the
     # proxy's startup preload is deliberately cache-only, and the default HF cache lands
     # under ~/.cache, which the add-on points at tmpfs (/tmp/cache) — wiped on every
-    # restart. Without a warm persistent cache the proxy runs forever in "deferred" mode
-    # and records zero compression savings. Cache on persistent storage and pre-warm it
-    # once (bounded so an offline install still starts the proxy, in pass-through mode,
-    # and retries the download on the next start).
+    # restart. Without a warm persistent cache the proxy ran forever in "deferred" mode
+    # and recorded zero compression savings. Point the cache at persistent storage;
+    # nothing else is needed here — the proxy's own request path already downloads a
+    # missing model in the background on first use (ensure_background_load) and passes
+    # requests through uncompressed until it lands, so this self-heals within a couple of
+    # requests on the first boot and loads instantly (eager preload) on every boot after.
+    # A synchronous pre-warm was tried here and removed: it blocked the port bind for up
+    # to the download's duration, which left the settings-managed ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL
+    # (see 82-claude_tools.sh) pointing at a proxy that wasn't listening yet.
     export HF_HOME="${HOME}/.headroom/hf"
     mkdir -p "$HF_HOME"
     chown abc:abc "$HF_HOME" 2> /dev/null || true
-    # headroom lives in the lsiopy virtualenv; plain `python3` does not see its packages,
-    # so derive the venv interpreter from the resolved headroom entry script.
-    headroom_python="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "$(command -v headroom)")")/python3"
-    if ! s6-setuidgid abc "$headroom_python" -c \
-        'from headroom.transforms.kompress_compressor import _load_kompress; _load_kompress(allow_download=False)' \
-        > /dev/null 2>&1; then
-        bashio::log.info "svc-headroom: pre-warming the Kompress model cache (one-time download)"
-        timeout 300 s6-setuidgid abc "$headroom_python" -c \
-            'from headroom.transforms.kompress_compressor import _load_kompress; _load_kompress()' \
-            || bashio::log.warning "svc-headroom: Kompress pre-warm failed; compression stays deferred until the model can be downloaded"
-    fi
     bashio::log.info "svc-headroom: starting local Headroom proxy on ${host}:${port}"
     exec s6-setuidgid abc headroom proxy --host "${host}" --port "${port}" --code-aware
 fi