isair/jarvis

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An assistant that lives with you, not in the cloud

Jarvis is built to be part of the conversation. Talk through an idea, discuss plans with a friend, then ask “Jarvis, what do you think?” While listening, it keeps a short, temporary rolling transcript of nearby speech so it can join an ongoing conversation using what was just discussed.

Address Jarvis by name anywhere in a sentence and follow up naturally. Speech recognition, language models and speech synthesis run on hardware you control.

Your conversation and all data stays solely on your computer. Sensitive information is redacted before it reaches model context or the saved diary, even though both are local, to ensure the security of your private information. Web search, weather and connected tools use the network but send only what is necessary when you ask for those capabilities.

A voice, a face, and a place in the conversation.

Quick Install

1. Download the app. Choose your platform from GitHub Releases.

2. Choose your local models. The setup wizard guides you through speech recognition and a model server. Use Ollama, or connect an OpenAI-compatible server you already run, such as LM Studio, oMLX or llama.cpp.

3. Make it yours. Allow microphone access and let the first model downloads finish. When Jarvis reports that it is listening, try:

“Jarvis, help me think through my day.”

Right-click the face or use the tray menu to open Chat. Text replies are silent.

What you can do

• A third person in the room. Bring Jarvis into an ongoing conversation with friends, talk through a problem aloud, or ask it to weigh in on a decision. “Jarvis, what do you think?” draws on the recent discussion, not just that one sentence.
• Remember beyond one session. Ask about past conversations, preferences and plans. Browse your local diary and knowledge graph in the Memory Viewer.
• Get things done. Built-in tools cover web search, weather, time, screenshot OCR, file access, nutrition tracking and optional location awareness.
• Connect your own tools. MCP servers add browser automation, smart-home controls and other integrations.
• Dictate into other apps. Hold a hotkey, speak, then release to paste locally transcribed text. See the platform limitations first.
• Type when you need to. The companion chat shares your voice conversation and memory. Text replies are silent, and you can rewind a sent message to regenerate from that point.

Bring Jarvis into the discussion

You: We could have a picnic tomorrow.

A friend: Depends on the weather. Should we plan something indoors instead?

You: Jarvis, what do you think?

Jarvis can use the recent conversation to understand that you are asking about the weather for the picnic, rather than treating the last sentence as an isolated question. This is the experience it is built around. Personalised requests can also draw on saved conversation history when no external tools are needed. How reliably it understands the context depends on speech recognition and your chosen model; see the evaluation results.

Inside Jarvis

Keep setup, activity and settings within reach.

A guided start

Choose the runtime that fits your machine. Setup walks through local models, speech and optional capabilities without requiring you to edit a configuration file.

Progress you can actually follow

The activity timeline keeps ordinary events readable. Downloads have a separate card with transferred bytes, percentage, speed and remaining time when the downloader provides them. Loading and warmup are distinct stages.

Your setup, without the JSON

Choose models, tune speech recognition, configure tools and enable Low Power Mode from Settings in the tray menu.

A quiet companion to voice

Open Chat for silent replies in the same conversation. Pause Voice Listening stops room transcription during meetings while chat and dictation stay available.

Known limitations

Jarvis is developed primarily on macOS. Windows and Linux behaviour may differ. See the evaluation results for tested capabilities.

• Accuracy and speed depend on your models and hardware. Smaller models can miss parts of complex requests, and slow speech recognition can drop utterances.
• Dictation is unavailable on macOS 26+ (#172). Linux dictation requires X11, with limited Wayland support.
• Spoken “stop” can be mistaken for echo while Jarvis is speaking (#24).
• Very large web pages cannot be read. Page downloads have a 2 MiB limit.
• No mobile app is available (#17).

Configuration

Most people can use Settings from the tray. Advanced setups can edit ~/.config/jarvis/config.json.

Open the configuration guide →

The guide covers local model servers, speech recognition, Low Power Mode, voices, dictation, location, MCP integrations and troubleshooting.

Dictation at a glance

Hold to record and release to paste. Double-tap for hands-free recording. Optional filler-word removal, a custom dictionary and dictation history are available in Settings. macOS needs Accessibility permission; Linux requires X11, with limited Wayland support.

Bring your own tools

Connect MCP servers for browser automation, Home Assistant, GitHub, databases and more. Credentials and network access depend on the tools you choose. Review a server’s permissions before enabling it.

Integration examples and server settings →

Troubleshooting

• 🔇 Speech output unavailable: A voice-model or dependency failure disables speech output for the current run. Check the reason in Logs, correct the voice model settings or missing dependencies, then restart Jarvis.

• 🔊 Piper download interruptions: Connection resets and timeouts receive bounded retries. If they persist, check connectivity and restart Jarvis; completed voice files are retained. Certificate errors require correcting the trust configuration.

• 📥 Whisper download failures: Faster-whisper downloads run in a separate process with a five-minute limit. If a download crashes or times out, restart Jarvis to resume it; cached models stay available offline.

• 🎤 Whisper cache errors: Jarvis attempts one clean download recovery per startup. If it fails, check connectivity and free disk space, then follow the printed cache guidance and restart. Device fallbacks retain files downloaded during recovery.

More troubleshooting →

For Developers

Evaluation results · Report a bug · Contribute

Privacy & Storage

Local AI is the default, not a paid upgrade. No cloud AI service is required.

• Local file access: limited to your home directory. Directory listings identify symbolic links and reject patterns that reach external directories.
• Conversation memory: stored locally under ~/.local/share/jarvis.
• Sensitive information: redacted before model context and saved diary entries. The in-memory chat still shows what you typed.
• Network boundaries: model downloads, web tools and enabled integrations can make network requests. An external model endpoint receives the requests you send to it.

Support

Jarvis is free for personal use. For commercial use, get in touch.

If it earns a place on your desktop, help keep it growing.

Sponsor on GitHub · Buy a coffee · Join the discussion