ai_env/README.md

Privacy-First Command-Line AI for Linux

Unlock the power of AI—right from your Linux terminal.

This project delivers a fully local AI environment, running open source language models directly on your machine.

No cloud. No GAFAM. Just full privacy, control, and the freedom to manipiulate commands in your shell.

How it works

• Ollama run language models on the local machine.
• openedai-speech provide text to speech capability.
• speaches-ai provide transcription, translation, and speech generation.
• nginx add an authentication to the API.
• aichat is used as LLM CLI tool featuring Shell Assistant, Chat-REPL, RAG, AI Tools & Agents.

Everything is free, open-source and automated using Docker Compose and shell scripts.

Requirements

To run this project efficiently, a modern computer with a recent NVIDIA GPU is required.

As an example, I achieve good performance with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-14700HX, a GeForce RTX 4050, and 32GB of RAM.

You must use Linux and the NVIDIA Container Toolkit.

Note that it is probably possible to run the project on other GPUs or modern MacBooks, but this is not the purpose of this project.

How to launch the server

Choose the models you wish to use in the docker-compose.yaml file and change the API token in the .env file as follows:

LLM_API_KEY=1234567890

Next, start the servers and their configuration with Docker Compose:

docker compose up --build -d

How to use

The setup_desktop.sh script allows for copying a compiled static version of aichat from a container to your host and configuring the tool.

Aichat essentials

To launch a chatbot while maintaining context:

aichat -m ollama:qwen2.5 -s

With a prompt:

aichat -m ollama:qwen2.5 --prompt "I want you to act as an English translator, spelling corrector and improver. I will speak to you in any language and you will detect the language, translate it and answer in the corrected and improved version of my text, in English. I want you to only reply the correction, the improvements and nothing else, do not write explanations."

Pipe a command and transform the result with the LLM:

ls | aichat -m ollama:qwen2.5 --prompt "transform to json"

Go to the AIChat website for other possible use cases.

Text To Speech

To use text-to-speech, use the script in the tools/tts.sh file.

Example:

./tools/tts.sh -l french -v pierre --play "Aujourd'hui, nous sommes le $(date +%A\ %d\ %B\ %Y)."

Speech To Text

For the Speech to Text functionality use tools/stt.sh. The function record allows you to use PulseAudio to record the computer's audio (for example, a video in the browser). The transcription function converts the audio file into text.

Example:

./tools/stt.sh record -s alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3-platform-skl_hda_dsp_generic.HiFi__Speaker__sink.monitor
./tools/stt.sh transcription -f record_20250112_125726.wav -l fr

How to Use Remotely

The API authentication via Nginx allows you to open the API on the internet and use it remotely. By adding a reverse proxy like Caddy in front of it, you can also add TLS encryption. This way, you can securely use this environment remotely.

To use the scripts tools in a remote context, use the environment variables TTS_API_HOST and STT_API_HOST.

Example:

TTS_API_HOST="https://your-remote-domain" ./tools/tts.sh -l french -v pierre --play "Aujourd'hui, nous sommes le $(date +%A\ %d\ %B\ %Y)."
STT_API_HOST="https://your-remote-domain" ./tools/stt.sh transcription -f speech_20250112_124805.wav -l fr