Pillar guides
Hand-written, deeply researched guides on running AI locally. No listicles, no hedged "X might be good for Y" filler — clear opinions backed by real benchmarks.
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Can I run AI locally on my computer?
Tier-by-tier walkthrough from a 4 GB laptop to a 24 GB GPU. What runs, what doesn't, and the 5-minute Ollama starter path.
Free AI tools that run on your computer
The honest roundup. Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp, GPT4All, Open WebUI, AnythingLLM, Continue.dev, Aider — what each does, what's free, what breaks first.
Local AI vs ChatGPT Plus
Capability, cost, privacy, latency — when local genuinely wins, when ChatGPT Plus stays cheaper. No fake save-$1000-a-year claims.
Best hardware for running local AI models
Tier-by-tier hardware buying guide from $0 (CPU-only) to $4,000+ (dual 3090). What models fit at each tier, gotchas per tier.
Common local-AI setup mistakes
Ten anti-patterns operators hit. Q2_K coding quants, ignoring KV cache, NVLink-doesn't-pool-memory, Ollama on Windows AMD, driver auto-update, etc.
How much does local AI cost?
Hardware, electricity, time, opportunity cost — the four categories. When local saves money, when it doesn't. Honest ranges, no fake ROI.
How to use AI in job applications ethically
What AI is good for in job search (drafting, tailoring, practice) and what it must not do (impersonate you, invent qualifications, mass-spam). The honest principles.
Choosing a GPU for local AI in 2026
Tier-by-tier buying guide across NVIDIA RTX 50/40/30, AMD RX 7000/9000, Apple Silicon, and the used market. Honest verdicts per tier.
Will-It-Run methodology
The exact math behind our hardware compatibility predictions. KV cache, runtime overhead, bandwidth-based speed prediction, confidence levels.
Best GPU for ComfyUI
VRAM tiers for SDXL, Flux, multi-LoRA, and IPAdapter workflows. Where the 12 GB floor is real and where 24 GB starts mattering.
Best GPU for KoboldCpp
What KoboldCpp's split-GPU + RoPE-scaling architecture does to VRAM math. Honest tier picks for chat, RP, and long-context fiction work.
Best GPU for AI agents
Agents pin context windows + run multi-turn loops. The VRAM math changes vs single-turn chat. What 24 GB covers, where 32 GB pays off.
Best GPU for local OCR
OCR with vision-LLMs (Qwen2.5-VL, InternVL) vs traditional pipelines (Tesseract, PaddleOCR). Hardware fit per workload.
Best GPU for voice cloning
F5-TTS, XTTS-v2, and Coqui TTS hardware fit. What 8 GB covers for promo-clip workflows; when fine-tuning needs more.
Best upgrade from RTX 3060 12 GB
When 12 GB stops being enough + what the honest upgrade path looks like. Used 3090 vs new 4060 Ti 16 GB vs hold-and-wait.
Best local-AI setup for beginners
Realistic first-month setup. Hardware that works, software that installs cleanly, the order to learn things in.
Best free local AI tools (2026)
Updated 2026 roundup. Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp, Open WebUI, Continue, Aider, ComfyUI — what's free, what's worth installing first.
Best AI PC for students
Honest budget tiers under $800, $1500, $2500. What runs at each tier; when a used 3090 makes sense vs a new mid-tier card.
In the queue
Guides we're writing next, in roughly priority order. Vote for one or suggest a topic at Contact support.