LLMs are too important to be left to big tech. There is a gap between frontier models and models that can run on your device, but local models improve each day, and once they cross a certain capability threshold, they will be good enough for most purposes; and will come with full privacy and control.
Based on these assumptions, we've been working on Ensu, Ente's offline LLM app. Today is our first release.
Download it here.
In the rest of this post, we'll explain why we think the assumptions hold, what we're doing, and how you can get involved.
Why
LLMs are too important to be left to big tech. We've written in depth about this earlier, here and here.
Briefly, those posts come at it from two angles:
If you're someone who hates LLMs, you would still be able to recognize in clearer moments of thought that LLMs are a technology that can't just be wished away.
If you're someone who finds joy in interacting with LLMs, you would recognize the lack of privacy and the high dependency (arbitrary bans, content shaping, non-portable memory) you have on centralized providers.
And in both cases it is also clear that LLMs can be used to manipulate people en masse. Ergo, we can't be at the mercy of big tech controlling them.
The issue is that there is a capability gap between large centralized models and smaller models that can be run offline on your device.
But we're problem solvers, and this is not our first rodeo. When we first started Ente Photos, it seemed unthinkable that we'd be able to deliver face recognition, person clustering and natural language image search all running locally on your device. People called us crazy.
It took many years, but we did it. Our users enjoy these features every day. Everything is done locally on device, and also synced, end-to-end encrypted, across all your devices. Full privacy, full control, without loss of convenience; technology in service of people, not as a tool of surveillance.
In the same vein, while we have been itching for a long time to do something about local LLMs, it is only recently that smaller models are becoming feasible to run on consumer devices. We now think there are actionable steps we can take.
This is where the second assumption comes in. While smaller decentralized models improve every day, so do the larger centralized models. However, we think the gap is not what is important - instead, it is about a threshold, and about how the model's capabilities are used. Once smaller models will cross a certain threshold, they will be sufficient to provide joy, utility and convenience in the life of people.
What
Today we're releasing Ensu. It is a chatgpt-like app that runs completely on your device with full privacy and zero cost. Soon, you'll also be able to backup and sync your chats across your devices by connecting your Ente account (or self hosting), with full end-to-end encryption.
This is not the beginning, nor is this the end. This is just a checkpoint.
Ensu is currently an Ente Labs project. For now, we want to only iterate on the product and its direction, without bringing pricing and stability too early into the picture.
Just to set expectations right, it is currently not as powerful as ChatGPT or Claude Code. Still, it is already quite fun! Here are some things we've been doing with it:
Introspecting about thoughts we wouldn’t risk putting into a non-private LLM.
Talking about books (Ensu currently doesn't have web search, but you'll be surprised how well it knows classics like the Gita or the Bible)
Jabbering with it on flights when there is no internet.
The app is open source, and available for iOS, Android, macOS, Linux and Windows. We also have an experimental web based version. Image attachments are also supported. The core logic is written in Rust, and for each platform we have native (mobile) and Tauri (desktop) apps that use the same shared logic.
We've already implemented (optional) E2EE syncing and backups so that you can access your chats across devices. This uses the Ente account you already have, and it can also be self hosted just like Ente Photos. However, at the last minute we decided not to enable sync in the checkpoint we're releasing today. That's the story of the next section.
What next
We're viewing Ensu as a journey. There is a precise destination - a private, personal LLM with encrypted sync - however the path to it is hazy. There are multiple directions we could take:
Instead of general chat, we shape Ensu to have a more specialized interface, say like a single, never-ending note you keep writing on, while the LLM offers suggestions, critiques, reminders, context, alternatives, viewpoints, quotes. A second brain, if you will.
A more utilitarian take, say like an Android Launcher, where the LLM is an implementation detail behind an existing interaction that people are already used to.
Your agent, running on your phone. No setup, no management, no manual backups. An LLM that grows with you, remembers you, your choices, manages your tasks, and has long-term memory and personality.
For now we will just wait a while for feedback before taking the next step. And because these future directions might change the persistence architecture, we've delayed enabling sync.
When sync does arrive, your existing local chats will get backed up and sync too.
We would love your feedback. The next steps are unclear, and we want you to influence what we build. Tell us what you want, and we'll make it. You can write to us at [email protected], or join our Discord and head over to the #ensu channel.
You can download Ensu here.