Show HN: I built a free CharacterAI that runs locally

#1

Post by akadeb » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 10:07 AM UTC

CharacterAI has over 20M active users and lets people talk to AI voice clones. I built a local alternative that clones any voice with The voice pipeline currently supports MLX on any M1 through M5 chip. I used Whisper-Turbo for STT, Qwen3.5-9B-4bit for the LLM and Qwen3-TTS-0.6B-4bit for TTS.

The repo also has a Websocket Transport to add these voices to devices powered by the ESP32 via secure websockets.

Show HN: I built a free CharacterAI that runs locally
github.com

Re: Show HN: I built a free CharacterAI that runs locally

#2

Post by ad-tech » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 11:59 AM UTC

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Re: Show HN: I built a free CharacterAI that runs locally

#3

Post by BloodAndCode » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 1:33 PM UTC

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Re: Show HN: I built a free CharacterAI that runs locally

#4

Post by BorisMelnik » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 6:37 PM UTC

wow really cool, I browsed the repo but couldnt find what you used for the case on the ESP?

Re: Show HN: I built a free CharacterAI that runs locally

#5

Post by BorisMelnik » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 6:46 PM UTC

also I'm not a hardware hacker - are there any ESP32 kits with the speaker / led / button / amp already wired or in a kit at least? (that you recommend for this)

Re: Show HN: I built a free CharacterAI that runs locally

#6

Post by Remi_Etien » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 6:59 PM UTC

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Re: Show HN: I built a free CharacterAI that runs locally

#7

Post by akadeb » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 9:38 PM UTC

BorisMelnik wrote: post #4

wow really cool, I browsed the repo but couldnt find what you used for the case on the ESP?

Thanks Boris! The case is made out of Resin but I started with PLA. Will post the open-sourced STEP files there

Re: Show HN: I built a free CharacterAI that runs locally

#8

Post by akadeb » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 9:40 PM UTC

BorisMelnik wrote: post #5

also I'm not a hardware hacker - are there any ESP32 kits with the speaker / led / button / amp already wired or in a kit at least? (that you recommend for this)

Yeah I sell one here https://www.elatoai.com/products/ai-devkit If you pre-order on the link I can ship you one at a discount