Given how the blog is presented, I assumed this was something novel that solved a unique problem, maybe a local multi-modal assistant for your device.
I installed it and it's none of that. It is a mere wrapper around small local LLM models. And, it's not even multi-modal! Anyone could've one-shotted this in Claude in an hour (I'm not exaggerating).
What's the target audience here? Your average person doesn't care about the privacy value proposition (at least not by severely sacrificing chat model's quality). And users who do want that control can already install LMStudio/Llama.cpp (which is dead simple to setup).
The actual release product should've been what's described in "What's next" section.
> 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.
jubilanti 12 minutes ago [-]
> Anyone could've one-shotted this in Claude in an hour (I'm not exaggerating).
This probably could have been one-shotted with Sonnet, not even Opus. Given how over indexed they are on LLM coding, Haiku might even be able to do it.
This is actually an interesting coding model benchmark task now that I think about it.
VladVladikoff 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe I’m missing it but the page is really light on technical information. Is this a quantized / distilled model of a larger LLM? Which one? How many parameters? What quantization? What T/s can I expect? What are the VRAM requirements? Etc etc
Either LFM2.5-1.6B-4bit or Qwen3.5-2B-8bit or Qwen3.5-4B-4bit
sync 2 hours ago [-]
Hmm, the Mac app downloaded gemma-3-4b-it-Q4_K_M.gguf for me (on an Apple M4) - maybe the desktop apps download different models?
Though, I don't see any references to Gemma at all in the open source code...
embedding-shape 2 hours ago [-]
Huh, 1.6B/2B/4B models, I guess they weren't joking when they said "not as powerful as ChatGPT or Claude Code". Also unsure why they said "Claude Code", it's not an CLI agent AFAIK?
dr_kiszonka 50 minutes ago [-]
I so wanted to love Liquid AI's models, but despite their speed I was never able to get anything useful out of them. Even their larger models can't be trusted with simple stuff like inserting a column into a markdown table. The advertised tool calling is also not great. What I found interesting was that the ones I tried were a little light on guardrails.
I would really like to know what people use these small and tiny models for. If any high-karma users are reading it, would you consider posting Ask HN?
Mashimo 1 hours ago [-]
> Also unsure why they said "Claude Code", it's not an CLI agent AFAIK?
Claude Code is a Desktop app as well.
embedding-shape 32 minutes ago [-]
Ok, but "Claude Code"/"Claude Desktop" regardless is software, a tool, not a model/LLM. Doesn't make much sense as they've written it.
lancekey 1 hours ago [-]
I don’t think so. IIRC the desktop app is called Claude and it has a code option in the UI.
The consfusing way AI companies like to name products is something to be studied.
dgb23 2 hours ago [-]
This seems to be a general chat app, but otherwise small models can be very effective within the right use cases and orchestration.
embedding-shape 2 hours ago [-]
> otherwise small models can be very effective within the right use cases and orchestration
very limited amount of use cases, perhaps. As a generalized chat assistant? I'm not sure you'd be able to get anything of value out from them, but happy to be proven otherwise. I have all of those locally already, without fine-tuning, what use case could I try right now where any of those are "very effective"?
hellcow 2 hours ago [-]
I tried it on my iPhone 13 mini. I believe the model you get changes depending on your phone specs. For me it downloaded a ~1.3GB model which can speak in complete sentences but can’t do much beyond that. Can’t blame them though—that model is tiny, and my device wasn’t designed for this.
ahofmann 2 hours ago [-]
I have the same questions. After installing the app, it downloads 2.5 GB of data. I presume this is the model.
jubilanti 1 hours ago [-]
There's dozens of local inference apps that basically wrap llama.cpp and someone else's GGUFs. The decentralized sync history part seems new? Not much else. But the advertisement copy is so insufferably annoying in how it presents this wrapper as a product.
Have a comparison chart to Ollama, LMStudio, LocalAI, Exo, Jan.AI, GPT4ALL, PocketPal, etc.
bee_rider 31 minutes ago [-]
There are so many wrappers that are obviously wrappers. I wonder if part of the value proposition here is that it is “like a product.” I have no idea if they actually achieve that, though, and doubt it really could be proven on a site.
jasongill 50 minutes ago [-]
I love Ente Auth, but Ente (as a company/organization) does a somewhat poor job of calling out their non-photos apps in their branding and on their website. If you go to the "Download" button at the top of the page on this page about their LLM chat app, it downloads... their photo sharing application. If you click Sign Up, it takes you to a signup page with the browser title "Ente Photos" but the page text says "Private backups for your memories" with a picture of a lock - is that the Ente Auth signup, or the Ente Photos app signup?
A little bit of cleanup on their site to break out "Ente, our original photo sharing app" from the rest of their apps would do wonders, because I had to search around on the announcement to find the download for this app, which feels about like trying to find the popular Ente Auth app on their website
moqster 2 hours ago [-]
Heard the first time about them (ente) yesterday in a discussion about "which 2FA are u using?". Directly switched to https://ente.com/auth/ on Android and Linux Desktop and very happy with it.
Going to give this a try...
_factor 2 hours ago [-]
You presumably had a working 2fa app already, but off the cuff decide to switch to new unvetted variant X; basically unknown auth system after reading a few paragraphs of text in an afternoon?
Does this seem sound?
utopiah 27 minutes ago [-]
What's the risk?
They just store tokens, without other FA at "worst" you get locked of your account but nobody else has access either. You're also supposed to, as good practice, not be limited to token generation and typically have a dozen or so of recovery tokens. Also if they were somewhat not working at doing the 1 task they should do, namely generate tokens, then you won't be able to use them so it won't even be added.
So... I might be missing something, can you please explain what worries you and why I should thus worry too?
ahofmann 2 hours ago [-]
While I would have the same reaction, in this case I think it is a sane decision. Ente is cornering the privacy market and I think they're doing a great job. They have a lot to lose (trust) and it would be stupid if they did something shady with the data entered in the 2FA app.
PurpleRamen 1 hours ago [-]
Not knowing them, how could OP trust them instantly? Whether they really have that trust or not, you have to know them for a while and from many different trustable sources. The story is a bit strange.
stonogo 2 hours ago [-]
> cornering the privacy market
this seems self-contradictory
yolo_420 2 hours ago [-]
Ente is extremely well known in the privacy circles, so this is not just some random company with a random app out of nowhere.
Check PrivacyGuides for example.
43 minutes ago [-]
deltoidmaximus 1 hours ago [-]
I ended up picking them because they were the only open source one that worked on all my devices IIRC.
if it helps, I've used ente for a year and I really like it.
glitchc 2 hours ago [-]
This sounds like an ad.
gwerbret 2 hours ago [-]
As do most of the associated comments. I think we're surrounded by bots.
vaporwario 26 minutes ago [-]
agreed. i have never seen anyone (let alone an assortment) of hacker news users saying "i switched my 2fa to this after seeing how great it was!" Not really sure how one 'switches their 2fa' to an LLM...
mschulze 14 minutes ago [-]
This thread is about the 2FA app, not the LLM app. I don't care about the LLM app. What's this witch hunt? This app literally solved a (self-inflicted) problem I was having for some years now where I was keeping an old phone around just for MFA. I even thought about creating an iOS app that's compatible with Aegis files (actually I even _started_ working on that, but didn't get far) just to solve my problem. Now I don't have to, thanks to a comment here, and that's why I posted. Geez. I guess I'll stay with negative comments for the future, they seem to be more trustworthy.
mschulze 2 hours ago [-]
I'm not a bot. Check my comment history and account age.
yomismoaqui 1 hours ago [-]
You sure were when you posted those comments, but now, we cannot be sure...
So you look down you see a tortoise. It's crawling towards you.
mschulze 49 minutes ago [-]
I mean I get it, astroturfing is a real problem and an annoying one for communities. But I also have no idea how to prove to you that I am neither a bot nor shilling here.
mschulze 2 hours ago [-]
Oh, wow, thanks for posting that. I switched to Ente for my photos recently, had no idea they also have a 2FA app. I was looking for a replacement for Aegis (after a switch to iOS), and this can even import from Aegis backup files. Neat. This means I can finally ditch my old phone I still had to have around just for 2FA :)
BaudouinVH 1 minutes ago [-]
Installed it on a not-so-young laptop. It crashes immediately after launch. I blame the laptop.
If Ente is reading this : please add requirements to make it run (how many RAM, etc.)
lone-cloud 1 hours ago [-]
Any half capable engineer can vibe code this in a week. Who cares?
H8crilA 16 minutes ago [-]
Someone still has to.
koehr 2 hours ago [-]
I just tried it. It downloaded Qwen3.5 2B on my phone and it's pretty coherent in its sentences, but really annoying with the amount of Ente products mentioned in every occasion.
Other than that it's fast enough to talk to and definitely an easy way to run a model locally on your phone.
sunaookami 6 minutes ago [-]
>but really annoying with the amount of Ente products mentioned in every occasion
What do you mean by IA in your device ? is it a local LLM ? if yeas how much params 4B or 8B...?? device requirements not mentionned too
kennywinker 27 minutes ago [-]
Looks like it checks your device specs and downloads whatever the best model that will work? On mine it’s using a 3.5b version of llama
FitchApps 1 hours ago [-]
Have you tried WebLLM? Or this wrapper: CodexLocal.com
Basically, you would have a rather simple but capable LLM right in your browser using WebLLM and GPU
The (hn) title is misleading (unlike the actual title): It's an LLM _App_ not an LLM.
post-it 2 hours ago [-]
> This is not the beginning, nor is this the end. This is just a checkpoint.
Come onnnnnn. I would rather read a one line "Check out our offline llm" rather than a whole press release of slop.
This looks very neat. I'm not familiar with the nitty gritty of AI so I really don't understand how it can reply so quickly running on an iPhone 16. But I'm not even going to bother searching for details because I don't want to read slop.
tim-projects 46 minutes ago [-]
This app isn't very useful but it did get me thinking.
I have a phone in a drawer I could install termux and ollama on over tailscale and then I'd have an always on llm for super light tasks.
I do really long for a private chat bot but I simply don't have access to the hardware required. Sadly I think it's going to be years to get there..
nathan_compton 2 hours ago [-]
Please god stop letting LLMs write your copy. My brain just slides right over this slop. Perhaps you have a useful product but christ almighty I cannot countenance this boring machine generated text.
white_dragon88 10 minutes ago [-]
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Pythius 2 hours ago [-]
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Arn_Thor 2 hours ago [-]
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chocks 2 hours ago [-]
This looks amazing! As I learn and experiment more with local LLMs, I'm becoming more of a fan of local/offline LLMs. I believe there's a huge gap between local LLM based apps and commercial models like Claude/ChatGPT. Excited to see more apps leveraging local LLMs.
juliushuijnk 2 hours ago [-]
I'm working on a rather simple idea; a Wordpress plugin that allows you to use a local LLM inside your wordpress CMS.
The essence works, I was able to let it make a simple summary on CMS content. So next is making it do something useful, and making it clear how other plugins could use it.
Spam for what? This is hackernews, I'm "hacking something" to push more control to users.
I'm talking about connecting Ollama to your wordpress.
Not via MCP or something that's complicated for a relatively normal user. But thanks for the link.
juliushuijnk 2 hours ago [-]
It seems your link about the Wordpress variation validated my idea :).
If the new Wordpress feature would allow for connecting to Ollama, then there is no need anymore for my plugin. But I don't see that in the current documentation.
So for now, I see my solution being superior for anyone who doesn't have a paid subscription, but has a decent laptop, that would like to use an LLM 'for free' (apart from power usage) with 100% privacy on their website.
bilekas 2 hours ago [-]
> use a local LLM inside your wordpress CMS
For when wordpress doesn't have enough exploits and bugs as it is. Also why bother with wordpress in the first place if you're already having an LLM spit out content for you ?
juliushuijnk 2 hours ago [-]
What's your point? Don't use LLM for CMS content? That my code is buggy? Or that people shouldn't trust the LLM they run on their computer on their own website?
You can check the code for exploits yourself. And other than that it's just your LLM talking to your own website.
> Also why bother with wordpress in the first place
Weird question, but sure, I use WordPress, because I have a website that I want to run with a simple CMS that can also run my custom Wordpress plugins.
Rendered at 15:58:41 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I installed it and it's none of that. It is a mere wrapper around small local LLM models. And, it's not even multi-modal! Anyone could've one-shotted this in Claude in an hour (I'm not exaggerating).
What's the target audience here? Your average person doesn't care about the privacy value proposition (at least not by severely sacrificing chat model's quality). And users who do want that control can already install LMStudio/Llama.cpp (which is dead simple to setup).
The actual release product should've been what's described in "What's next" section.
> 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.
This probably could have been one-shotted with Sonnet, not even Opus. Given how over indexed they are on LLM coding, Haiku might even be able to do it.
This is actually an interesting coding model benchmark task now that I think about it.
Either LFM2.5-1.6B-4bit or Qwen3.5-2B-8bit or Qwen3.5-4B-4bit
Though, I don't see any references to Gemma at all in the open source code...
I would really like to know what people use these small and tiny models for. If any high-karma users are reading it, would you consider posting Ask HN?
Claude Code is a Desktop app as well.
> Use Claude Code where you work
> Desktop Termianl IDE WEb and iOS Slack
Not that it is important any way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
very limited amount of use cases, perhaps. As a generalized chat assistant? I'm not sure you'd be able to get anything of value out from them, but happy to be proven otherwise. I have all of those locally already, without fine-tuning, what use case could I try right now where any of those are "very effective"?
Have a comparison chart to Ollama, LMStudio, LocalAI, Exo, Jan.AI, GPT4ALL, PocketPal, etc.
A little bit of cleanup on their site to break out "Ente, our original photo sharing app" from the rest of their apps would do wonders, because I had to search around on the announcement to find the download for this app, which feels about like trying to find the popular Ente Auth app on their website
Going to give this a try...
Does this seem sound?
They just store tokens, without other FA at "worst" you get locked of your account but nobody else has access either. You're also supposed to, as good practice, not be limited to token generation and typically have a dozen or so of recovery tokens. Also if they were somewhat not working at doing the 1 task they should do, namely generate tokens, then you won't be able to use them so it won't even be added.
So... I might be missing something, can you please explain what worries you and why I should thus worry too?
this seems self-contradictory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OTP_applications
So you look down you see a tortoise. It's crawling towards you.
If Ente is reading this : please add requirements to make it run (how many RAM, etc.)
https://github.com/ente-io/ente/blob/f254af939ff6950b63edf5f... Here is the system prompt, kinda embarassing
https://github.com/Arthur-Ficial/apfel
Apple Ai on the command line
https://github.com/alichherawalla/off-grid-mobile-ai
Then moved to pocket pal now for local llm.
Come onnnnnn. I would rather read a one line "Check out our offline llm" rather than a whole press release of slop.
This looks very neat. I'm not familiar with the nitty gritty of AI so I really don't understand how it can reply so quickly running on an iPhone 16. But I'm not even going to bother searching for details because I don't want to read slop.
I have a phone in a drawer I could install termux and ollama on over tailscale and then I'd have an always on llm for super light tasks.
I do really long for a private chat bot but I simply don't have access to the hardware required. Sadly I think it's going to be years to get there..
It requires a Firefox add-on to act as a bridge: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ai-s-that-hel...
There is honestly not much to test just yet, but feel free to check it out here, provide feedback on the idea: https://codeberg.org/Helpalot/ais-that-helpalot
The essence works, I was able to let it make a simple summary on CMS content. So next is making it do something useful, and making it clear how other plugins could use it.
Also: "Your AI agent can now create, edit, and manage content on WordPress.com" https://wordpress.com/blog/2026/03/20/ai-agent-manage-conten...
I'm talking about connecting Ollama to your wordpress.
Not via MCP or something that's complicated for a relatively normal user. But thanks for the link.
If the new Wordpress feature would allow for connecting to Ollama, then there is no need anymore for my plugin. But I don't see that in the current documentation.
So for now, I see my solution being superior for anyone who doesn't have a paid subscription, but has a decent laptop, that would like to use an LLM 'for free' (apart from power usage) with 100% privacy on their website.
For when wordpress doesn't have enough exploits and bugs as it is. Also why bother with wordpress in the first place if you're already having an LLM spit out content for you ?
You can check the code for exploits yourself. And other than that it's just your LLM talking to your own website.
> Also why bother with wordpress in the first place
Weird question, but sure, I use WordPress, because I have a website that I want to run with a simple CMS that can also run my custom Wordpress plugins.