Built a local AI assistant because I always knew this day would come, yesterday just made it feel very real

I saw this coming from the start, so I sat down and started building. But yesterday's Anthropic shutdown made it hit different.

One government directive and you see what happened. Or its just Anthropic i dont know, but that's the risk of depending on someone else's infrastructure.

So here's what I've been working on: Bantz, a fully local AI personal assistant with a 1920s butler persona, running on Gemma 4b:

- Reads & summarizes Gmail by category (personal, institutional, notifications) (well tries at least)

- Google Calendar integration

- Web search + deep research (async, multi-source) (this is good for a 4b parameters model)

- Real-time system monitoring with alerts (CPU/RAM/swap)

- Scheduled tasks & autonomous directives

- Wayland native desktop control (still in progress but at least i can control my pc from far away)

- Runs on CPU only — no GPU required (if youre using llama or the other models well its needed)

Optimizing a small local model is an absolute nightmare, but at least it's MY nightmare and no one can take it away- for now.

Oh yes, for now this is my nightmare to maintain alone-- if anyone wants to grab a corner and help build, that would be absolutely amazing. Ideas, PRs, feedback, all welcome. Our little model has big ambitions :')

github.com/miclaldogan/bantzv2

https://preview.redd.it/0snp7rf4497h1.jpg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f9db195cdba415e79734b5475fe85ca959c8fe63