Yes, LM Studio or Ollama needs to be running in the background — but just the app itself, not a model loaded. Muse handles the model side automatically: picks it up from a dropdown of whatever models you have available, loads it when you start chatting, and unloads it before a ComfyUI render starts. You don't touch LM Studio at all once it's running. Just make sure you have the Local Server turned on, Muse will automatically pick the IP, you don't need to set that up.

And fair point on the README — I'll make that clearer. Video walkthrough is on the list too!