#87 of 100 · AI
A Siri that stays at home
A Siri-like assistant that runs on their own machine with local speech and LLM, handles calendar, notes and apps, and keeps data private.
Asks per year
What the askers want
- Would pay38%
- Want it local or private62%
- Object to subscriptions0%
- Want it open source or self-hosted62%
- Want AI to do it75%
Share of the 8 asks that say so, as judged by Jev.
What exists on Show HN
Built, still asked for8 Show HN launches do this job, and 20 more do part of it. People still ask, so the launches are missed, unknown, or not what they want. Ask what they’re missing before you build.
- Snips is a AI Voice Assistant platform 100% on-device and private2017 · 372 pts
- Hitoku Draft – Context aware local assistant2026 · 21 pts
- Willow: the fastest and most private open source voice assistant2023 · 12 pts
- Phntm-ONE: I built a local AI desk assistant2026 · 5 pts
- Hitoku Draft – context aware local macOS assistant2026 · 4 pts
- Personal Jarvis, an open source voice assistant that runs your PC2026 · 3 pts
- Sonia. Local AI Assistant Linux. 13Gb RAM, No GPU, Skills Supported2026 · 3 pts
- Sonia. Local Voice Assistant Linux. 13Gb RAM, No GPU, Skills Supported2026 · 2 pts
Instead of: Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant
The idea, as matched
A voice assistant like Siri or Alexa that runs locally and privately (local speech recognition plus LLM), controls the home, calendar and apps, and speaks plainly, with optional swap-in cloud models.
Jev first matched 14 requests to this idea; a second reader kept 8 of 14.
Every ask, newest first
Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.
Reader’s note. Voice-for-ChatGPT asks excluded as not private.
- Feb 2025Would pay for a local-first conversational assistant with swappable LLMs and full data control. Read it: a comment in “Alexa+”
- Sep 2024Asks for a local Siri-like assistant using Whisper and a small LLM to run shortcuts and take notes. Read it: a comment in “Forget ChatGPT: why researchers now run small AIs on their laptops”
- Jan 2024Would definitely pay for a commercial alternative to Alexa and Google Assistant. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: Is there any commercial alternative to Alexa/Google assistant?”
- Dec 2022Wants an offline voice assistant for basic tasks like calendar entries, notes, music and opening apps. Read it: a comment in “Voice assistants failed because they serve their makers more than help users”
- May 2019Would happily pay for a voice assistant that runs on their own machine and respects privacy. Read it: a comment in “Car Owners Should Control Data Collected by Cars”
- Sep 2018Wants a subscription assistant where users own and can wipe their data and models. Read it: a comment in “Google Maps won't let you save home address without allowing all Google tracking”
- Dec 2017Wants a self-hosted Echo-like assistant for alarms and news briefings. Read it: a comment in “Kids in ‘Netflix Only’ Homes Saved from 230 Hours of Commercials a Year”
- Sep 2012Wants an IM-style assistant connected to calendars, home and services that can run commands across their digital life. Read it: a comment in “How would you use an accurate Natural Language Understanding (NLU) API?”
Building this?
Read ten of the asks above first, because they say what the existing launches miss. If you ship it, post it as a Show HN so the next run of this list finds it.
Ship it like Vercel, on a server you own
This site runs on ShipTiffin. A push to GitHub deploys it, the way it would on Vercel, but the server is a Hetzner box in your own account. Postgres, sign-in, email, jobs and analytics are already on it, every project gets a hard limit, and nothing is billed by usage.
$19 a month per box, plus about $10 for the server at Hetzner. Open source, so you can also run it yourself for free.