diff --git a/src/tools/media/stt.engine.ts b/src/tools/media/stt.engine.ts
index d2cee42..07c3e70 100644
--- a/src/tools/media/stt.engine.ts
+++ b/src/tools/media/stt.engine.ts
@@ -59,7 +59,18 @@ export async function createTranscriber(
 ): Promise<Transcriber> {
   if (cached && cached.model === model) return cached.transcriber;
 
-  const { pipeline } = await import('@huggingface/transformers');
+  const { pipeline, env } = await import('@huggingface/transformers');
+
+  // Fetch model weights through our same-origin /hf proxy so they cache reliably
+  // (Hugging Face redirects large files to a CDN the browser won't cache). Skip on
+  // localhost dev, where the Cloudflare Worker proxy isn't running.
+  try {
+    const origin = self.location?.origin ?? '';
+    if (origin && !/localhost|127\.0\.0\.1|\[::1\]/.test(origin)) {
+      env.remoteHost = `${origin}/hf`;
+    }
+  } catch { /* non-worker context — leave the default */ }
+
   const backend: SttBackend = (await webgpuAvailable()) ? 'webgpu' : 'wasm';
 
   const pipe = await pipeline('automatic-speech-recognition', model, {
diff --git a/worker/index.js b/worker/index.js
index fdc4231..161263a 100644
--- a/worker/index.js
+++ b/worker/index.js
@@ -28,6 +28,31 @@ export default {
       return env.SIGNAL.getByName(roomId).fetch(request);
     }
 
+    // Same-origin proxy for Hugging Face model files. transformers.js fetches
+    // Whisper weights from huggingface.co, which 302-redirects large files to a
+    // CDN — the browser/Workbox can't reliably cache those redirected responses,
+    // so the model re-downloaded on every refresh. Proxying resolves the redirect
+    // server-side and returns the bytes same-origin with an immutable cache header,
+    // so the browser HTTP-caches them and they survive refreshes.
+    if (url.pathname.startsWith('/hf/')) {
+      if (request.method !== 'GET' && request.method !== 'HEAD') {
+        return new Response('Method not allowed', { status: 405 });
+      }
+      const upstream = 'https://huggingface.co/' + url.pathname.slice('/hf/'.length) + url.search;
+      const res = await fetch(upstream, {
+        headers: { 'user-agent': 'goodwebtools-proxy' },
+        cf: { cacheEverything: true, cacheTtl: 31536000 },
+      });
+      if (!res.ok && res.status !== 206) {
+        return new Response('Upstream model fetch failed', { status: res.status || 502 });
+      }
+      const headers = new Headers(res.headers);
+      headers.set('cache-control', 'public, max-age=31536000, immutable');
+      headers.set('access-control-allow-origin', '*');
+      headers.delete('set-cookie');
+      return new Response(res.body, { status: res.status, headers });
+    }
+
     if (url.pathname.startsWith('/models/')) {
       if (request.method !== 'GET' && request.method !== 'HEAD') {
         return new Response('Method not allowed', { status: 405 });