# AI Assistant / Companion > Source: > Published: 2026-06-29 04:42:00+00:00 Hey everyone, I’m not a developer. I’m a regular user from Dublin, Ireland who got tired of living inside browser tabs and chatbot windows. I’ve been using Ainara for a while now and I think it genuinely deserves more attention in this community. Ainara is a local-first AI assistant that runs as a desktop app on your machine, not in a cloud interface, and that distinction matters more than I expected. What actually impressed me was the persistent memory. It remembers things across sessions — not just within a conversation but across days and weeks. It knows my context, my preferences, my ongoing projects. That alone puts it in a different league from anything else I’ve tried. I honestly dont think there is anything else out there. The LLM switching is something else too. You can swap between Grok, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, or local Ollama models mid-conversation and your memory and context carry over seamlessly. No starting from scratch, no copy-pasting. It just works. There’s no mandatory cloud subscription either. It runs on your hardware, with local models if you want full privacy, but cloud options are there if you prefer them. You stay in control. The real-time capabilities are where it gets interesting. Live market data, web search, email, weather, file operations — all through natural language. It’s not just a chatbot, it actually does things. And more capabilities are being added constantly. There are also two editions — a Vanilla version for general productivity and daily use, and a Supporter Edition that adds specialised real-time market and trading tools for users who need that layer. Same core, different tooling depending on your needs. I also want to give credit where it’s genuinely due. There are two developers behind this project who give it everything — long hours, real dedication, no shortcuts. What they’ve built is seriously impressive and they deserve recognition for it. The project is running since Jan 2025. If you want to see it in action before committing, there are demos on YouTube at @DaveAinara, and the full app is at ainara.app. Happy to answer any questions from a user perspective. Setup screenshots below and user interface below. Can only post 2.