After over a year of my nights and weekends, the Jenny app is done!
After over a year of development, the Jenny app, a free, MIT licensed Electron desktop application for running local LLMs, has been released. Developed by a non-professional software developer, Jenny offers features like tool calling, rollback, and an IDE. Despite other options like Unsloth Desktop, LM Studio, and Open WebUI, the creator hopes users will enjoy Jenny, which is available with an unsigned installer .exe.
- Published
- 09/07, 16:27 UTC+0
- Ingested
- 09/07, 21:00 UTC+0
- Source type
- Dev community
- Tier
- Community
- Source status
- Healthy
Tier is a per-source editorial setting, not a per-item score.
Hi all! I just wanna say that I am tired lol. Yes, it's another harness, but I spent a lot of time and effort and have forsaken my hobbies to build the Jenny (like XJ-9) app. Jenny is a free, MIT licensed electron desktop app for running local LLMs with tool calling, rollback, and an IDE.
A lot of you probably had the same thought I did a year or year and a half ago: frontier LLM use is subsidized heavily by private equity and venture capital, which will eventually dry up and then be enshitified. So, I started building a harness that can host local LLMs privately. I went through many vibecoded iterations throughout the past 1.5 years and finally landed on a native electron desktop app. I wanted to make it easy and seamless for people.
I am not a professional software dev but I do have a deep personal interest for it and AI tech. HOWEVER, the Jenny project became a second job and its in a state that I think it's ready for release. This has been a solo project and super fun. I know there are many other options out there that beat me to the punch like Unsloth Desktop (wonderful btw), LM Studio, and Open WebUI, but I hope someone can enjoy Jenny and what it has to offer! I plan to maintain and improve the app, but again, solo here and I do have a day job and friends that I should focus on a bit more. (Opening issues are welcomed, but please be gentle!)
- Private and locally run, no network calls except to your local model runtime (only private user facing telemetry so you can debug and troubleshoot)
- Makes small models capable (highly recommend ornith1.5:9b for tool calling and speed!), but with safety and rollback features so WHEN a small model screws up bad, you don't have to worry. Destructive shell commands need approval and file edits are checkpointed!
- Some assistant like features like calendar and scratchpad that the model is able to read/modify
- llama.cpp, vLLM, or any OpenAI-compatible local endpoint, plus GGUF via the managed llama-server (for MTP)
I would really appreciate any feedback to validate the time and mental pain that was put into this project. I whine, but it's all love! I hope Jenny helps you build too.
Windows build is solid (performance too with 5070ti and ornith15:9b), MacOS is untested cause I'm a poor. No Linux (sorry, but blame engine providers)
I also made an unsigned installer .exe for convenience, but understand if you don't trust it! SmartScreen warning will appear. https://github.com/SaltyPretz3l/jenny/releases/latest/download/Jenny-Setup-x64.exe