Private AI for Documents, Writing and Research

PenEcho is an open-source workspace that puts handwritten notes, diagrams and AI-generated widgets on an infinite canvas. It runs on your computer as a macOS or Windows app, or through Node.js with a browser interface. It's for people who want to work through technical ideas visually and give AI feedback by drawing directly on the result.

Karakeep is a bookmark manager for people who collect links, notes, images and PDFs in one place. You can run the open source app on your own server with Docker under the AGPL-3.0 license, or use the managed Karakeep Cloud service. It has a web app, iOS and Android apps, and extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

SurfSense is an open-source NotebookLM alternative that turns documents into cited answers and editable deliverables on your computer. It's a desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux, aimed at people working with confidential files, research or study material. You don't need an account.

LibreTranslate is a self-hosted machine translation API for developers and organizations that want to run translation on their own servers. It's free to download and can work offline. The project is open source under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0).

AnythingLLM is an open source AI assistant for people who want to chat with their documents and use AI agents on their own hardware. The desktop app runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, while a Docker deployment supports multiple users on a self-hosted server. No account is required for the desktop app.

Onyx is an AI search and chat platform for teams whose information is spread across workplace apps. It indexes company knowledge so employees can ask questions across sources and get answers grounded in relevant documents. Teams can deploy it in their own cloud or on bare metal, including an air-gapped environment.

GPT Researcher is a self-hosted AI research agent for people who need detailed, cited reports drawn from the web, their own documents, or both. You choose the language model and search provider, and can run the software on your own server or through Docker. It's open source under Apache 2.0.

LightRAG combines knowledge graphs with vector search to answer questions across a document collection. It's a self-hosted Python framework for developers building document assistants, particularly where answers depend on relationships between facts in different files, such as legal or financial material.

SearXNG is a self-hosted metasearch engine for people who want web search without user tracking or profiling. It brings results from separate search services into one browser interface. You can run your own instance or use a public one, depending on who you want to trust with your searches.

RAGFlow is an Apache 2.0 licensed RAG engine for teams building AI agents that need to answer questions from their own documents. It can run on a self-hosted server through Docker on Windows, macOS or Linux. A separate hosted cloud service is available.

Noema is a private local AI assistant for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro. It's for people who want to chat with models and work with their own files on Apple hardware without depending on a cloud service. Local chats can stay on your device, and file retrieval runs there too.

Open Notebook is a self-hosted alternative to Google's NotebookLM for researchers, students, and professionals who want AI help with their own research materials. It runs locally or on your server through Docker and is open source under the MIT license. You choose which content the AI can access and which provider processes it.

AFFiNE is a local-first knowledge workspace for individuals and teams who want documents and visual planning in the same place. It combines a block editor, an edgeless whiteboard and databases, making it an alternative to Notion and Miro for team wikis, project plans and connected notes.

Cherry Studio is a free, open source desktop app for people who use several AI models and want their conversations in one place. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. Chats, settings and knowledge base files are stored on your device.

SiYuan is a local-first, self-hosted knowledge workspace for people who want linked notes, research material and AI writing tools in one place. Its block references let you connect individual passages rather than whole documents, with bidirectional links to follow those connections. It's open source under AGPL-3.0.

Docling is an MIT-licensed, open source document parser for developers turning files into structured content for search and AI applications. It runs locally on macOS, Linux, and Windows, including in air-gapped environments. Its PDF processing identifies page layout and reading order, extracts tables, code, and formulas, and classifies images.

Open WebUI gives individuals and teams a self-hosted place to chat with local LLMs and cloud models. It runs on your own computer or server, including through Docker, and can work entirely offline with local models.

MinerU parses documents locally into structured text for AI agents, RAG systems and knowledge bases. It's for people working with scanned PDFs, academic papers and Office files whose tables, formulas or page layouts need more care than plain text extraction.

Paperless-ngx is a self-hosted document management system for people who want to keep scanned paperwork in a searchable digital archive. It brings document scanning, indexing and storage together, so you can find records by their contents rather than sift through paper folders. You can run it on a local server at home, and it supports deployment with Docker.

Off Grid AI runs language models on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows and Linux. You can chat, analyze documents and generate images on your own hardware. The mobile app uses the MIT license, while the desktop app uses AGPL.

Whisper Notes is an offline transcription app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Silicon Macs. It's for people recording interviews, lectures or meetings who need the audio and transcripts to stay on their device. It requires no account and has no cloud sync, analytics or tracking.

ScribeDog is a Markdown editor for writers and note-takers who want AI assistance while keeping their documents on their own hardware. It displays formatted text, tables and images instead of Markdown syntax, but saves ordinary .md files that work with Git and other editors. It has a native desktop app and a self-hosted Server Edition available through Docker.

QMD is a local search engine for people with Markdown notes, meeting transcripts, or documentation they want to search themselves or make available to an AI agent. It accepts exact keywords and natural-language queries, with indexing and model inference running on your own machine. It's open source under MIT.

OpenWhispr is a free, MIT-licensed dictation and meeting transcription app for people who want voice input across their apps with control over where processing happens. It's available on macOS, Windows, Linux and iOS. Local transcription works offline and keeps audio on your device; optional cloud transcription sends audio to the selected provider, whose retention policies apply.

Amical is a free, open-source AI dictation app that formats spoken text for the app you're using. It's for people who want voice input for email, chat, coding prompts and everyday writing, with a choice between local processing and cloud models. It runs on macOS and Windows, with mobile apps for iOS and Android.

RecurseChat is a paid Mac app for people who want to chat with AI and ask questions about their files on their own computer. It runs local LLMs without an internet connection or a server, keeping local conversations on the device. The same app also connects to Claude and ChatGPT, so you can choose local processing or a cloud provider.

Aiko is a paid, native transcription app for macOS, iOS and visionOS that processes speech on your device with OpenAI's Whisper model. It's for people turning meetings, lectures or other recordings into text while keeping the audio local, including sensitive recordings.

Linguist is a free browser translation extension for people who read across languages and want control over where their text goes. Its built-in Bergamot translator processes text on your device without an internet connection. You can also choose an external translation provider or connect a local backend such as Ollama or LibreTranslate.

Perfect Memory AI keeps a searchable record of what you've seen on your screen and heard in meetings on Mac and Windows. It's for people who need to find a page, presentation or conversation again without remembering which app held it. Recordings stay on your device, and search returns material you've actually seen or heard.

ChatGPTBox is a free, open-source browser extension for people who want AI help with the pages they read, search results and selected text. It works in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, with mobile support too. You can connect it to Ollama or a self-hosted model through its custom model mode, or use cloud services such as ChatGPT, Claude, Moonshot and Azure.

Kangaroo is a desktop SQL client and database administration app for developers and database administrators who work across different database systems. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux and includes an AI assistant for help with database problems alongside its query and design tools.

Vanna is a self-hosted Python framework for building AI agents that answer database questions in plain language. It's for teams adding chat to analytics products or internal data tools, especially when each user needs different access to the data. The project is archived and no longer maintained. Its open-source code uses the MIT license.

CodeProject.AI Server gives developers a shared API for AI tasks that run on their own hardware. It's a self-hosted service for adding image analysis, text processing and generation to applications. Processing stays on the machine running the server, without cloud calls or sending data outside your device or network.

OpenAgent is a self-hosted personal AI assistant that combines document search with agents that can act on your behalf. It's for people who want an assistant on their own computer or server, and teams building agents around their documents and workflows. It runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux as a single executable. It's free and open source under Apache 2.0.

h2oGPT is a self-hosted ChatGPT alternative for people who want to chat with local models and ask questions about their own documents. The project is archived and no longer maintained. It's open source under Apache 2.0, with support for Linux, macOS, Windows and Docker.

Nougat is a local AI PDF parser for researchers and developers who need scientific papers as usable text, including their equations and tables. It converts academic PDFs into Markdown-style documents with LaTeX notation, so the output retains structure that plain text extraction can lose.