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Show HN: LocalGPT – A local-first AI assistant in Rust with persistent memory

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Show HN: LocalGPT – A local-first AI assistant in Rust with persistent memory

#1

Post by yi_wang »

I built LocalGPT over 4 nights as a Rust reimagining of the OpenClaw assistant pattern (markdown-based persistent memory, autonomous heartbeat tasks, skills system).

It compiles to a single ~27MB binary — no Node.js, Docker, or Python required.

Key features:

- Persistent memory via markdown files (MEMORY, HEARTBEAT, SOUL markdown files) — compatible with OpenClaw's format - Full-text search (SQLite FTS5) + semantic search (local embeddings, no API key needed) - Autonomous heartbeat runner that checks tasks on a configurable interval - CLI + web interface + desktop GUI - Multi-provider: Anthropic, OpenAI, Ollama etc - Apache 2.0

Install: `cargo install localgpt`

I use it daily as a knowledge accumulator, research assistant, and autonomous task runner for my side projects. The memory compounds — every session makes the next one better.

GitHub: https://github.com/localgpt-app/localgpt Website: https://localgpt.app

Would love feedback on the architecture or feature ideas.

Show HN: LocalGPT – A local-first AI assistant in Rust with persistent memory
github.com

Re: Show HN: LocalGPT – A local-first AI assistant in Rust with persistent memory

#3

Post by theParadox42 »

I am excited to see more competitors in this space. Openclaw feels like a hot mess with poor abstractions. I got bit by a race condition for the past 36 hours that skipped all of my cron jobs, as did many others before getting fixed. The CLI is also painfully slow for no reason other than it was vibe coded in typescript. And the errors messages are poor and hidden and the TUIs are broken… and the CLI has bad path conventions. All I really want is a nice way to authenticate between various APIs and then let the agent build and manage the rest of its own infrastructure.

Re: Show HN: LocalGPT – A local-first AI assistant in Rust with persistent memory

#4

Post by dvt »

So weird/cool/interesting/cyberpunk that we have stuff like this in the year of our Lord 2026:

   ├── MEMORY.md            # Long-term knowledge (auto-loaded each session)
   ├── HEARTBEAT.md         # Autonomous task queue
   ├── SOUL.md              # Personality and behavioral guidance
Say what you will, but AI really does feel like living in the future. As far as the project is concerned, pretty neat, but I'm not really sure about calling it "local-first" as it's still reliant on an `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`.

I do think that local-first will end up being the future long-term though. I built something similar last year (unreleased) also in Rust, but it was also running the model locally (you can see how slow/fast it is here[1], keeping in mind I have a 3080Ti and was running Mistral-Instruct).

I need to re-visit this project and release it, but building in the context of the OS is pretty mindblowing, so kudos to you. I think that the paradigm of how we interact with our devices will fundamentally shift in the next 5-10 years.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRrKQl0kzvQ

Re: Show HN: LocalGPT – A local-first AI assistant in Rust with persistent memory

#5

Post by bakugo »

ramon156 wrote: post #2

Pro tip (sorry if these comments are overdone), write your posts and docs yourself (or at least edit them). Your docs and this post is all written by an LLM, which doesn't reflect much effort.

> which doesn't reflect much effort.

I wish this was an effective deterrent against posting low effort slop, but it isn't. Vibe coders are actively proud of the fact that they don't put any effort into the things they claim to have created.

Re: Show HN: LocalGPT – A local-first AI assistant in Rust with persistent memory

#7

Post by applesauce004 »

Can someone explain to me why this needs to connect to LLM providers like OpenAI or Anthropic? I thought it was meant to be a local GPT. Sorry if i misunderstood what this project is trying to do.

Does this mean the inference is remote and only context is local?

Re: Show HN: LocalGPT – A local-first AI assistant in Rust with persistent memory

#8

Post by atmanactive »

dvt wrote: post #4

So weird/cool/interesting/cyberpunk that we have stuff like this in the year of our Lord 2026: ├── MEMORY.md # Long-term knowledge (auto-loaded each session) ├── HEARTBEAT.md # Autonomous task queue ├── SOUL.md # Personality and behavioral guidance Say what you will, but AI really does feel like living in the future. As far as the project is concerned, pretty neat, but I'm not really sure about calling it "local-firs…

> but I'm not really sure about calling it "local-first" as it's still reliant on an `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`.

See here:

https://github.com/localgpt-app/localgpt/blob/main/src%2Fage...

Re: Show HN: LocalGPT – A local-first AI assistant in Rust with persistent memory

#9

Post by halJordan »

dvt wrote: post #4

So weird/cool/interesting/cyberpunk that we have stuff like this in the year of our Lord 2026: ├── MEMORY.md # Long-term knowledge (auto-loaded each session) ├── HEARTBEAT.md # Autonomous task queue ├── SOUL.md # Personality and behavioral guidance Say what you will, but AI really does feel like living in the future. As far as the project is concerned, pretty neat, but I'm not really sure about calling it "local-firs…

You absolutely do not have to use a third party llm. You can point it to any openai/anthropic compatible endpoint. It can even be on localhost.

Re: Show HN: LocalGPT – A local-first AI assistant in Rust with persistent memory

#10

Post by halJordan »

applesauce004 wrote: post #7

Can someone explain to me why this needs to connect to LLM providers like OpenAI or Anthropic? I thought it was meant to be a local GPT. Sorry if i misunderstood what this project is trying to do. Does this mean the inference is remote and only context is local?

It doesn't need to
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