# I built JARVIS — a local-first AI assistant you actually own (macOS + Linux, MIT)

> Source: <https://dev.to/christopher_studva_7a1f8e/i-built-jarvis-a-local-first-ai-assistant-you-actually-own-macos-linux-mit-2171>
> Published: 2026-08-12 04:41:26+00:00

Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are thin clients. The intelligence lives on

someone else's servers, every word you say leaves your house, and the moment

the vendor has an outage — or you're on a plane — they mostly stop working.

I wanted the JARVIS I was *promised*: always on, genuinely helpful, and **mine**.

So I built one — **Jarvis CLS** — and open-sourced it (MIT).

`~/.jarvis`

— exportable and clearable.`faster-whisper`

), local voices
(`piper`

/`pyttsx3`

), and a model chain that always ends in an on-device
fallback. Unplug the internet and it keeps talking.No account. No forced cloud. No fixed voice. No *"sorry, I can't reach the
server right now."*

It's ~16,000 lines, **646 passing tests**, ruff- + mypy-clean (enforced in CI),

and hardened across five rounds of adversarial security review.

**macOS**

```
cd jarvis-unstoppable && brew install portaudio && make setup && make run
```

**Linux**

```
cd jarvis-unstoppable && bash scripts/install_linux.sh && make setup && scripts/dev_run.sh
```

Leave the API keys blank to run fully local/offline, or add them for a cloud brain.

Because an assistant that listens to everything you say should be one you can

read the source of. It's MIT, source-available, and self-hostable. If that's the

kind of assistant you've wanted, a ⭐ helps others find it — and I'd love to hear

what you'd build on top of it.

**Repo:** [https://github.com/reapersapprentice/Jarvis-CLS](https://github.com/reapersapprentice/Jarvis-CLS)

*— C.Studva*