I Built a Desktop Chat App for Running Local LLMs Offline

Creation of Openbench AI, a desktop chat application designed to run local large language models (LLMs) offline via Ollama, eliminating the need for cloud services or complex setup. The app allows users to run multiple models simultaneously for direct comparison, supports temporary chats, and enables in-app model installation, all while being open source and available as a pre-built release.

A few months ago I got tired of bouncing between ChatGPT, Claude, and a dozen other AI chat UIs every time I wanted to test a different model. It felt like productivity, if productivity involved tab overload and constant context switching. I also wanted to run everything locally without sending data off to someone else’s server just to ask a question about JSON formatting. So I built Openbench AI. OpenBench is a desktop chat app that connects to Ollama and lets you talk to local LLMs without the usual ritual of Docker, Python environments, or “why is this port not working again” debugging sessions. You install it. You open it. You chat. That’s it. You can run multiple models at once and watch them respond in real time to the same prompt. Instead of guessing which model is best, you can just compare them directly under identical conditions like a mildly scientific experiment that occasionally exposes how inconsistent models can be. Full rendering via KaTeX. So when a model writes equations or structured explanations, it actually looks like something a human might willingly read. Temporary chats that disappear when you close the app. No storage. No accounts. No memory overhead. Just quick experiments without commitment. You can install models directly inside the app instead of juggling terminal commands and hoping you typed everything correctly the first time. If I rebuilt it, I’d add OpenAI-compatible API support from day one. Right now it only works with Ollama, though the architecture already supports additional providers. I just haven’t wired them in yet because priorities are a fictional concept. The project is open source, and release builds are available if you want to try it without compiling anything yourself. Somewhere between building multi-model streaming and debugging Rust event bridges, I learned that the world did not strictly need another chat UI. So I made one anyway. For what it’s worth, it behaves better than most tools that have significantly more funding and optimism. And yes, it works just fine for a gay developer trying to wrangle multiple AI models without losing their mind to tool fragmentation. Which is probably more honesty than most software documentation is legally allowed to contain.