ownAI

ownAI is an AI chat bot tool. Open-source desktop AI agent that remembers conversations across sessions, writes its own JavaScript programs and skills for recurring tasks, and can run fully local or through ownAI Credits or a user's Anthropic or OpenAI key.

ownAI is an open-source personal AI agent that runs as a desktop application and is built around a simple premise: the assistant belongs to the person using it, not to a vendor. It is assembled with Tauri, Rust and JavaScript, and it keeps conversations and stored knowledge on the local machine. The agent is designed to accumulate context across sessions rather than resetting each time, so references to earlier discussions stay available weeks later. The makers position it against hosted assistants that keep user data on corporate servers. What separates ownAI from a conventional chatbot is self-programming. When a repeated task surfaces in conversation, the agent can generate a small JavaScript program to handle it, complete with a window and controls the user can revisit. The homepage example is a cafe owner who describes a recurring weekly supply order; the agent builds an order form, pre-fills quantities from what was discussed and presents it each Monday. Skills follow the open SKILL.md format, so programs and skills can be read, edited and shared. Compute is a deliberate choice with three routes. ownAI Credits give a single account and balance across supported models, with infrastructure in Europe and carbon removal attached to estimated emissions. Bringing an Anthropic or OpenAI API key lets users pay their provider directly. Self-hosted mode keeps models on local hardware with no external requests at all, which is the option for sensitive material and full sovereignty. External models receive only the information needed for a given request. The tool suits independent professionals, small business owners and knowledge workers who want a persistent assistant without handing their archive to a cloud service, and it rewards users comfortable with inspecting or extending code. A single hosted assistant with a large integration library will still be simpler for many buyers; ownAI trades that convenience for ownership and customization. Linux is the current download target.