Run your own AI - locally, privately, on your own hardware.

Tutorials, hardware guides, and the latest AI news for people who'd rather own their setup than rent it from the cloud. Build it. Run it. Own it.

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In a hurry?

Want a private, ChatGPT-style AI on your own hardware?

You only need two guides to get there - everything else here is for going deeper, whenever you actually want it, not before.

  1. 1 Set up your machine →
  2. 2 Install the chat interface →
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Build It

Hardware setup, installs, and step-by-step walkthroughs for picking or building the right machine for local AI.

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Run It

Running models day to day - Ollama, Open WebUI, RAG, coding assistants, and everything else once your setup is live.

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Own It

Privacy, security, memory, and hardening your setup once local AI is part of your daily routine, not just an experiment.

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News · Oct 16, 2026

Meta's Muse Spark Open Runs on Macs, if You Mean Two M5 Ultra Mac Studios

Meta released open weights for its 816B Muse Spark model and demoed it on two Mac Studios. What that means for running it at home, and what it does not.

Read more → Model finder · updated weekly

What can your computer actually run?

Enter your RAM and graphics card, get the models that fit and the exact command to pull each one. Last checked October 16, 2026.

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Ryzen 7 Mini PC (32GB RAM)
Hardware pick

Ryzen 7 Mini PC (32GB RAM)

A buying profile for a 32GB Ryzen 7-class mini PC: enough RAM and CPU headroom for 7-8B models, no GPU required.

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Common questions

Do I need a GPU to run AI locally?
No. Most of what's covered here runs fine on CPU-only hardware. A GPU speeds things up, but it is not required to get started.
Is this free to follow?
Yes. Every guide uses tools that are free for the kind of personal setup covered here, with open-source tools wherever possible. The only real cost is hardware if you want a dedicated machine.
What if I have zero AI or ML background?
That is who this site is built for. No black boxes - every guide explains the why, not just the copy-paste commands.
What can I actually do with a local AI?
More than chat in a terminal: a ChatGPT-style interface, a coding assistant that keeps your code on your own machine, answers pulled from your own documents, image generation, and small automations scripted against the same model - all covered here, all running on your own hardware.
Who's behind this?
A security operations professional with over 30 years in IT, the last two spent bringing AI into daily security work and everyday life. Everything here has actually been set up and run, not just researched.