Front Porch AI

Private AI character chat — running entirely on your machine.

A free, open-source desktop app for immersive AI conversations. Run models locally for full privacy, or connect to OpenRouter and other remote APIs. Persistent memory, voice chat, a Realism Engine that makes every character feel alive — and now The Stoop, a community character hub built right in.

Get Front Porch AI

Two channels — pick your speed. Both are free, open-source, and install side-by-side without touching each other's data.

🛋️ Stable

Recommended

Latest release · v0.9.9.1.3 · tagged on main

🎭 Character Expressions — live emotion portraits that swap as the mood shifts (ONNX or LLM, fully on-device).
🧠 Mature Realism Engine — bond, trust, emotion, and arousal tracking with inertia between turns.
🗣️ Robust local voice — Kokoro & Piper TTS plus Whisper push-to-talk, all offline.
✍️ Redesigned character editor with editable Realism settings baked in.

Download Stable

Full release notes →

🤠 Rawhide

Nightly · cutting edge

Fresh builds every night from the Rawhide branch

🏡 The Stoop — a community character hub built into the app: browse, share & download cards (incl. whole group casts). New!
🎭 One chat, a changing cast — turn a 1:1 into a group in place and back, no forking or orphan copies.
🌐 Web app & phone access — the full experience in any browser, or on your phone over Tailscale.
💾 Smarter local backups — two-tier rolling snapshots replace the deprecated Cloud Sync.

Get a Nightly

Grab the newest Nightly rawhide.* pre-release · may have rough edges

🏡 New on Rawhide

The Stoop — pull up a chair, the neighbours brought characters

A community character hub built right into the app. Browse featured & mod-picked cards, follow creators, and download straight into your library — no browser, no separate website, no copy-paste imports. Whole group casts travel too: members, lorebooks, and their pre-seeded Realism & Needs state all arrive intact, ready to play. Only the hub touches the network; everything else stays local.

Open-source · AGPL-3.0 Local-first · only the hub is online Whole group casts, not just cards Opt-in · 18+ · NSFW off by default Optional two-factor auth

Read the full breakdown

Everything you need, nothing you don't

🔒

Private by Default

Run AI models locally with KoboldCpp — your conversations never leave your machine. No account needed and no telemetry for local use; remote APIs and The Stoop are strictly opt-in.

🧠

Realism Engine

Characters develop bonds, trust, and emotions across conversations. A dynamic relationship system that evolves with every interaction.

🏡

The Stoop

A community character hub built right in — browse, share, and download cards, including whole group casts with their Realism/Needs state. Open-source, local-first, opt-in, and 18+.

💬

Rich Character System

Full V2/V2.5 character card support. Import from SillyTavern, Chub.ai, or create from scratch with the built-in editor.

🎙️

Voice Chat

Full-duplex voice conversations with Whisper STT and Kokoro TTS. Push-to-talk or hands-free call mode.

📚

Long-Term Memory

RAG-based memory system remembers past conversations. Characters reference details from sessions days ago.

✍️

Story Generator

Multi-agent novel writing pipeline. Generate full stories with character arcs, world-building, and structured narratives.

🖥️

Cross-Platform

Native desktop app for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Apple Silicon optimized. GPU acceleration via CUDA, Metal, Vulkan, or ROCm.

🌐

Web & Phone Access

A full web app brings the desktop experience to any browser — or your phone over Tailscale — kept in sync with the desktop app.