AI & Agents · Intermediate

Local LLM Workstation

Run open models like Llama 3 and Qwen fully offline, with a clean chat UI.

Intermediate4-8 hoursPythonBashAI

Your own AI model running fully offline on your machine. No subscription, no rate limits, and no data ever leaving your laptop. You serve open models with Ollama, put a polished chat UI in front with Open WebUI, and swap between models like Llama 3 or Qwen depending on the task. The closest thing to owning your own ChatGPT.

What you build

  • Serve open models locally with Ollama
  • A full chat UI through Open WebUI in Docker
  • Swap models per task across Llama 3, Qwen, and more
  • Call the local OpenAI-compatible API from your own code
  • Fully private and offline

What it teaches

  • Local model inference
  • Docker Compose
  • Quantization basics
  • OpenAI-compatible APIs
  • Self-hosting

How it works

  1. 1

    You

    • browser
  2. 2

    Open WebUI

    • Docker

    ↓ API call

  3. 3

    Ollama

    • local server
  4. 4

    Model

    • Llama 3 / Qwen
fig. 01 — everything runs on your machine. the browser talks to open webui, which calls ollama serving the model.

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Take it further

  • Add retrieval over local files inside Open WebUI.
  • Try a smaller quantized model to fit a longer context.
  • Expose it on your home network for other devices.

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