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Garnet™

The Private-AI starter guide

A plain-English primer · about a 5-minute read

The short version: a private AI is a real assistant that lives on your computer instead of a company's servers. It's brilliant at everyday writing, thinking things through, and reading your own documents — and because nothing you type ever leaves your machine, you can finally use it for the things you'd never paste into a cloud chat box. The app is free. The same idea also scales up — for the few who need it, we build dedicated private-AI systems on their own hardware — but the free app is the right starting point for almost everyone, and that's where this guide lives.

What a private AI actually is

Think of the AI everyone else uses as a payphone in the town square: you walk out, hand your conversation to a stranger behind the glass, and trust them not to listen, not to write it down, and to still be there tomorrow. A private AI is your own phone, in your own home. The conversation happens inside your machine and stays there. It works in a blackout. And no one can hang it up or change the rules on you.

The thing that got installed is a model — a single large file that holds everything the AI learned, a bit like a dictionary that already knows how to write and reason. Once it's on your computer, the part that does the thinking sits there with it. When you ask it something, your machine works out the answer by itself — the way it adds up a spreadsheet or edits a photo. No message goes out to the internet, so there's nothing to intercept and no account watching.

Who it's for

Plainly: most people only ever need the free app. If you want a capable assistant for everyday writing, thinking a decision through, or asking questions about your own documents — and you'd like all of that to stay on your computer — the free Garnet app is the whole answer. You don't need anything paid, and we'd rather tell you that up front than sell you something you won't use.

The paid side — a dedicated build — is for a narrower group: someone who needs the AI always on and ready, a model far larger and sharper than a personal laptop can hold, or a private system wired into specific, sensitive work. If that's not you, the rest of this guide is everything you need.

What it's brilliant at (and what isn't)

Short version: it's brilliant at the everyday things, and the cloud giants still edge it on the rare hardest questions. We'd rather you know that honest trade before you start.

Brilliant at, right on your machine:

Still better in the cloud: the very hardest reasoning, and anything that needs live, up-to-the-minute web data. The giant assistants run on enormous machines in data centres; for the rare hardest questions they can still pull ahead. For nearly everything people actually reach for day to day, the one on your own computer answers right away — and answers only for you.

How big a model fits on your computer

Here's the one technical thing worth understanding, because it explains nearly everything else. To answer you, your computer has to load the whole model into its memory (RAM) at once. Bigger models know more and reason better — but they're heavier, and they can only be as big as your memory has room for. That's the whole trade in a sentence: more memory, a bigger model, a sharper Garnet.

Roughly, and honestly — these are guide-rails, not promises:

Apple-Silicon Macs (the M-series) share memory cleverly between the chip and the AI, so they punch above their number — a Mac often runs a model that a same-memory Windows PC would struggle with.

There's a ceiling to what any personal computer can hold. The truly large models — the ones that rival the big cloud assistants — need dedicated hardware built to carry them. That's not a limitation of the idea; it's just a different machine. It's exactly what a build is for.

How to get the most out of it

A few habits make the difference between a so-so answer and a genuinely useful one:

Prove the privacy to yourself

You don't have to take a promise on faith. Once Garnet is on your computer, pull your internet cable (or turn off Wi-Fi) and ask it something. It keeps right on answering. That's the whole argument in one move: if it still works with nothing connected, then nothing you type was ever going anywhere. No account to hijack, no database of your chats to leak — because neither exists. If you'd like to see how we hold ourselves to that, here's exactly what we can and can't see.

To be precise, because we'd rather you know exactly what "private" means here: anything Garnet keeps — your past conversations, your settings — is kept on your own computer, the same way a saved document is. It's yours to read or delete whenever you like. "Private" doesn't mean nothing is ever written down; it means nothing is written down anywhere but your machine, where only you can reach it.

Will it run on your computer

Probably yes. Most computers from the last few years run Garnet comfortably — 8 GB of memory or more, on Mac or Windows. Not sure how much memory you have, or what it all means? The section above is the plain-English version, and the 10-second checker on the homepage tells you in plain words where you land: smooth, fine, or maybe go with a setup.

On an older or smaller machine it still runs — just with a smaller model, so expect quick and useful rather than its sharpest. If that's you, the checker will say so plainly.

Ten prompts to start with

Copy any of these straight in and swap in your own text where it says [paste]:

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Before the upsell, the honest part: for almost everyone reading this, the free app is the whole answer, and we'd genuinely rather you just use it. The next section is for the small number of people who need something heavier — a dedicated system built around their work. If that's not you, you've already got everything you need above. No hard feelings, and no funnel.

When you want more than the app

The free app runs a genuinely capable assistant on your own computer, and for almost everyone that is the whole answer. Some people need more: a dedicated, always-on system; a model far larger than a personal machine can hold; a private AI built around their specific work, their files, their rules. That's a build, not an install — a serious piece of engineering. The engineer who would architect it is the person you talk to, not a salesperson.

We'd rather you know the scale up front: a serious dedicated system is real hardware and real engineering, and the larger ones run well into six figures — a top-end private model can pass $250,000 once you count the machine it lives on. That isn't a price we'll quote you on a webpage, because it depends entirely on what you actually need. Most people who reach out don't need anything near that — they want a guided setup, or a mid-sized model tuned to their work, and they leave the call with a clear plan, not an invoice.

A build tends to make sense when one of these is true:

If none of those quite fit, the free app is almost certainly enough — and the call will tell you that plainly, for free. The same conversation scopes all of it, from a guided install up to a dedicated build, so you don't have to know which one you need before you book.

Book a free scoping call Free, no card. You only pay if you decide to build.

How to get Garnet

The app is free and coming soon. If you just want the free app: join the waitlist and we'll email you the day it's ready to download — one email, the day it lands, nothing else. No account, nothing to subscribe to, your words stay on your own computer.

If you already know you need more — you want it set up for you, or a dedicated build around your work — book a free scoping call instead. No card; you only pay if you decide to build.

Not sure which is you? Start with the waitlist. You can always book a call later, and the call itself will tell you honestly whether the free app already covers what you need.

More: what Garnet is · what we can and can't see · the engineer who builds it · back to top.