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ELI — a local AI assistant where the LLM isn't the source of truth

A developer built ELI, a local AI assistant that does not rely on the LLM as the source of truth for system state. The project features desktop automation, local voice input/output, layered memory, document-grounded reports, sandboxed code execution, and MQTT smart-home integration, all running locally and offline. The developer is seeking feedback on the architecture and the separation of deterministic system state from probabilistic LLM reasoning.

read1 min views1 publishedJul 15, 2026

I ended up building ELI around a pretty simple idea: don't trust the LLM to describe system state.

So i am looking for some feedback if posible, hopefully this project works for you and helps you out in daily life! So poke holes, ask questions, and get involved if you want to participate!

At this point it can:

Desktop automation

Read your screen, PDFs and images

Local voice in/out with your own wake word

Layered memory (SQLite + FAISS + knowledge graph)

Generate document-grounded reports with citations

Sandboxed code execution

Local FastAPI/PWA interface you can open from anything on your LAN

MQTT smart-home integration

Runs locally and offline by default

It's mostly just been me over the guts of a year, so it's definitely not finished and I'm under no illusion there's plenty I've missed. That's kind of why I'm posting it here, just to get some honest feedback and to see if this project helps people.

I'd really appreciate people pulling the architecture apart, pointing out bad ideas, suggesting improvements, or just generally trying to break it. I'm especially interested in how other people separate deterministic system state from probabilistic LLM reasoning (if you do at all). One last thing! Check out the readme's, and the documents in /blueprints for a much clearer idea!

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