Show HN: I built Otis, a minimal AI agent that runs local models out of the box | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I built Otis, a minimal AI agent that runs local models out of the box

triangllabs.ai

19 pointspetrenk0n4 comments

Hi everyone,

Been working on Otis, an open-source ai agent that gives you one minimal experience across local and hosted open-weight models, privacy-focused by design.

On setup it recommends a local model based on the hardware Otis is running on, downloads it and runs it through llama.cpp for you. Ollama, LM Studio and Nvidia PAIR are supported too.

Excited for everyone to try it and all feedback is welcome!

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I am looked at the website, but I am not able to understand what problem you are trying to solve. Or why would I use you? (How are you differentiating yourself?)

I see you are reliant on ollama and llama.cpp (for example), so why should I not just use those directly if I am focused on local first models. (llama.cpp already makes recommendations on what models to run.)

If the argument is then that you are more of an agentic experience, then how are you differentiating yourself from something like the Hermes Agent?

I think more reasons on why this vs. what is already out there would be needed.

Appreciate the feedback!

Tbh Otis started as a personal TUI agent because I wanted something adapted to how I like to visualize things. Then from there it turned into the unified experience across local and hosted models to make it more accessible and intuitive for anyone. There is some overlap with Hermes but the interface is quite complex for most users.

I don’t believe in sacrificing functionality but at the same time you should not need to understand and learn model runtimes and harnesses etc. to use powerful AI successfully. Ollama and similar tools give users a bunch of models, options and settings to sift through but with Otis the focus is on simplicity, abstracting away the complexity to make getting right to work easy.

I agree though that I need to do a better job of communicating Otis’ differentiators. FWIW I am thinking about additional features to further simplify the experience, like automatic model routing.

1. Please put every prompt in one place for translating 2. Plase make translate to other language (I use Polish) 3. Please add module for compressing context. 4. Please add module for audio input oputput out of the box

I have also been building a local minimal AI agent too =P. It's still a TUI as I am still testing it out, though plan to make it into a native app too. Good luck to you too Peter.

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