Athanor Lite -- free desktop app for running local models without the setup headache Most tools in the local AI space assume you already know your way around quantization formats, context windows, and VRAM budgets. Athanor Lite is built for the people who just want to try a model without reading a wiki first. It scans your hardware, shows you exactly which models fit your GPU, and handles download through inference. One app, no terminal, no config files. Uses llama.cpp under the hood, wrapped in a Tauri + Rust + React desktop app. What it does:
Hardware detection (GPU architecture, VRAM, RAM, disk) Model catalog with fit verdicts based on your actual specs Ollama library import (zero-copy via hardlinks) Real-time inference HUD (tok/s, GPU %, VRAM, temperature) Workspace system for different model/task contexts Zero telemetry, zero accounts, zero cloud
I built a little demo where you give three models (Apertus, Llama, Qwen3) the same prompt and in the end you have to guess which is which just based on their answers.
I recently had a wager with my colleagues which had me create AI-assisted videos of myself in an Easter Bunny costume singing an AI-generated easter song (in different languages).