Private AI to Chat With PDFs and Documents

Instrukt is a terminal app for developers who want to build and test AI agents on their own machine or server. It can index local code and documents, but its chat models run through OpenAI's API, which requires an API key and internet access. It doesn't provide local chat inference.

UltraRAG is a self-hosted framework for researchers and developers building AI systems that answer questions using their own documents. Its Python application and Docker deployment provide a browser workspace for knowledge bases, workflow design and evaluation. Generation can use local models through vLLM or Hugging Face. Embeddings can use local Sentence Transformers or a configured OpenAI service; the OpenAI cloud connection sends embedding inputs to that service.

Note Companion is an AI plugin for Obsidian users who need to sort collected notes and turn recordings into searchable material. It suits researchers, students and people with a backlog of meeting notes.

Cherry Studio is a desktop AI chat app for people who use several model providers and want one place to manage their conversations. It supports local model connections as well as cloud services.

AstrBot is an AI chatbot platform for personal assistants, customer support bots and team automation inside messaging apps. You can host it on your own computer or server and choose a local or cloud model backend.

Deep Research is a self-hosted AI agent for people who want web research with traceable evidence and a library they control. It runs in Docker on your own machine or server, searches the web in successive rounds, and uses gaps in its findings to decide what to investigate next. Reports include citations, per-source notes with quoted evidence, and suggested follow-ups.

Prismos AI is a desktop assistant for people working with private documents and technical files. It uses local Ollama models to answer questions and retain knowledge for later conversations.

DoodleNote turns calls and rough jottings into meeting notes for people who want to keep recordings on their own computer. It captures both sides of a conversation in any meeting app without adding a bot to the participant list.

Bionic GPT is a self-hosted AI agent platform for internal teams building workflows around company knowledge and business systems. It supports tasks that involve several steps, tools and files while retaining context across the work.

kotaemon is an open source document chat app for people who want to ask questions across their files and inspect the evidence behind an answer. Developers can also use it to build custom document question-answering applications.

Enconvo is a native Mac AI assistant for people who want help with writing, research and tasks inside their everyday apps. It uses screen and selected-text context so you can ask about what you're working on without moving everything into a separate chat.

Khoj is a personal AI assistant for people who want answers from their files and the web. It also supports custom agents and recurring research tasks.

Kuku is a Markdown workspace for people who want a personal wiki with AI assistance while keeping their notes in ordinary local files. Its macOS app works with a folder of notes that other Markdown tools can also read.

Chatbox is an AI chat app for people who want to use local models and cloud providers in one interface. It supports Ollama for local LLM use, plus GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek with your own API keys.

DEEIX Chat is a self-hosted AI workspace for individuals and teams that want one place to use multiple model providers. It combines everyday chat with controls for organizations managing shared model access and usage.

Vibe-Research is a local financial research workbench for individual investors, with a Chinese-language browser interface and backend on your computer. It saves documents, research records and task state locally, while subscription services or model APIs supply AI reasoning. Relevant document passages go to the selected model, so local storage doesn't make the workflow offline.

Vinaya Journal is a desktop journal for people who want AI-assisted reflection while keeping their writing on their own machine. It's built for daily journaling, with AI that uses past entries as context for conversation.

Osaurus runs AI agents on your Mac for tasks such as reviewing documents, organizing files, and writing code. It keeps agent memory on your computer, so you can change models without losing the context of your work.

Halo is a desktop AI workstation for people who want agents to write code, manage files and handle recurring work through a visual interface. You can switch between Claude Code and Codex within the same app.

Kelivo is an LLM chat client for people who want local and cloud models in one app while keeping conversation history on their device. It connects to Ollama, self-hosted OpenAI-compatible services and providers including OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek and OpenRouter.

Personal LLM runs AI chat on your phone for people who want to ask questions without sending them to a cloud model. Chat, photo analysis and document questions work offline after you download a model and any required image support files.

AI Notebook is a desktop research notebook for asking questions about your own documents and checking the passages behind the answers. It suits people who want a local NotebookLM alternative with their research and notes in one workspace.

GPT4All is a local AI chatbot for people who want language models and document conversations on their own computer. Model inference and LocalDocs processing run on the device without a cloud connection.

OpenCrust is a self-hosted AI assistant platform for people who want agents to handle tasks through their messaging apps. Named agents can pass work to one another and retain conversation memory between sessions.

big-AGI is a browser-based AI workspace for developers, researchers and people who need to compare answers across models. It lets you examine separate responses and combine them while keeping control over model choice and reusable context.

RecurseChat is a Mac app for people who want private AI conversations and answers drawn from their own documents. Local models run without an internet connection or a separate server.

PaperQA2 is a Python research assistant for researchers and developers who need answers grounded in scientific literature. It searches a local document collection and connects its answers to evidence through in-text citations.

ChatFiles is a self-hosted document chatbot for people who want to question their uploaded files in a browser. The application runs locally, while its GPT integration makes remote API calls. Document chat also requires a Supabase vector database.

LEANN is a local vector database for people building AI search over personal data or knowledge collections. It reduces index storage by computing embeddings on demand rather than keeping every embedding on disk.

ThinkRAG answers questions about your own documents using a knowledge base on your laptop. It's for researchers, students and other knowledge workers who want to find information across their files, with particular attention to Chinese text.

ChatLLM Web is a browser app for people who want AI help with text and code while keeping their working data on their device. It combines chat, model selection, and an agent that can work with files you choose.

NotebookLlama is a self-hosted NotebookLM alternative for people who want control over the application code while using cloud services to process documents. It relies on LlamaCloud for document extraction and indexing, so self-hosting doesn't make the workflow fully local.

Noema is a local AI assistant for people who want to chat with models and get answers from their files on Apple devices. It brings models, documents and tools into a native workspace on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro.

FastGPT is an AI agent builder for teams creating document-based assistants and business workflows. It suits internal knowledge search, customer support and applications that combine answers with actions.