Orange PI AI Agent turns an Orange Pi single-board computer into a private, self-hosted AI office assistant. Built on AgentBridge, it reads your documents, writes office files, manages email, researches the web, speaks with a neural voice, answers the phone, chats on Telegram, schedules tasks and even produces podcasts — while your data stays on your device and never reaches a cloud.
Orange PI AI Agent is the ready-to-run configuration of AgentBridge for the Orange Pi family of single-board computers, and in particular for the powerful Rockchip RK3588 models. It turns an affordable, low-power board into a dedicated artificial intelligence assistant for your office: an always-on colleague that drafts contracts and invoices, builds spreadsheets, prepares slide presentations, produces detailed PDF reports, handles your email, remembers facts and deadlines, and keeps working while you are away — 100% private, on hardware you own.
Most AI assistants live in the cloud: you send them your documents, and a company you do not control reads them. The Orange PI AI Agent inverts that model. The intelligence runs on a small computer that sits on your desk, plugs into your network, and costs a fraction of a workstation. Your contracts, client files and internal reports are read by a machine that belongs to you, and they never leave it.
The result is the best of both worlds. You get the productivity of a modern agentic AI — planning, tool use, long-term memory — with the privacy of a local appliance. There is no subscription tied to your data, no third party holding your archive, and no monthly fee per seat. You buy the hardware once, and the assistant works for you day and night.
- Your documents, understood — point the assistant at your documents folder and it indexes everything: contracts, invoices, client files, product sheets, emails, spreadsheets. You then ask questions and it answers from your material, not from guesses.
- Finished office documents from a prompt — describe an invoice, an employment contract, a workbook with data and charts, a slide deck or a market analysis, and the agent delivers the finished DOCX, XLSX, PPTX or PDF.
- Email under your control — the assistant reads and summarises your inbox and drafts replies, sending only what you approve, through your own account (SMTP/IMAP).
- Web research with sources — current facts, competitor reviews and research reports with verifiable citations, blended with your own files.
- A voice of its own — neural text-to-speech (Kokoro) is included out of the box; you can dictate requests and hear the answers spoken.
- Reachable by phone (SIP) — the board becomes a phone endpoint: call it, enter your PIN, and hold a voice conversation with your assistant, 24/7.
- On Telegram — chat with the assistant from your messenger, with files in both directions and an allow-list that decides who can talk to it.
- Autonomous scheduling — deadlines, recurring reports and follow-ups that the assistant plans and executes by itself.
- Podcast production — ask for a podcast on any topic and receive a ready-to-publish MP3 with its RSS feed.
- A memory that never forgets — deterministic memory brings back the facts, people and documents the assistant has already handled, instantly and precisely.
The terminal chat, streaming the assistant's reply word by word, with the command palette and the status bar that follows the server, the model, the session and the context window:
PowerPoint-style presentations designed by the assistant from a plain request:
Detailed PDF market and financial analysis reports with authoritative sources:
Real office documents produced from a prompt — an invoice ready to use:
An employment contract in Word format, written and laid out entirely by the assistant:
An Excel spreadsheet with data, styles and a chart on a single A4 page:
A complete podcast episode — research, script and narration — produced by the assistant. Click to play:
And the same assistant on Telegram, replying inside your messenger:
Every demo above was produced end-to-end by the assistant on the AgentBridge engine — the very same engine that runs on your Orange Pi.
The Orange PI AI Agent is built for the Orange Pi 5 family of single-board computers, powered by the Rockchip RK3588 / RK3588S system-on-chip: 8 CPU cores (4× Cortex-A76 + 4× Cortex-A55), up to 32 GB of RAM on the higher-end models, and a 6 TOPS neural processing unit.
Supported and tested configurations include the Orange Pi 5, Orange Pi 5B, Orange Pi 5 Plus, Orange Pi 5 Pro, Orange Pi 5 Max and Orange Pi 5 Ultra, running a 64-bit Linux distribution (Armbian or Orange Pi OS).
The newest boards of the family, the Orange Pi 6 and Orange Pi 6 Plus, are powered by the CiXin P1 (CIX P1, model CD8180): a 12-core 64-bit Armv9 processor in a tri-cluster arrangement (4× Cortex-A720, 4× Cortex-A720 and 4× Cortex-A520), a 45 TOPS neural processing unit, up to 24 GB of LPDDR5 RAM on the Orange Pi 6 and 64 GB on the Plus, dual 2.5 GbE networking and dual M.2 NVMe slots — enough headroom for the most demanding office workloads.
The same software stack also supports other ARM boards based on the Rockchip RK3576, Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 and MediaTek Genio chipsets — ask the AgentBridge documentation for the full list.
No desktop computer is needed alongside the board: the archive is self-contained (about 460 MB) and includes the speech engine, its voices and every component, so there is no .NET installation and no extra setup.
Install on an Orange Pi (RK3588 family) running 64-bit Linux — one copy-paste command. The installer downloads the latest release, unpacks it, installs the missing dependencies and registers the assistant as a service that starts at boot. No .NET runtime, no manual steps.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Graphene-Lab/Orange-PI-AI-Agent/main/install.sh | bashPrerequisites: an Orange Pi 5/5B/5 Plus/5 Pro/5 Max/5 Ultra (or Orange Pi 6/6 Plus) with Orange Pi OS or Armbian, at least 1.5 GB free storage, and a terminal with sudo. Full details, options and troubleshooting are in the installation guide.
After the install the assistant is already running. Verify it, then choose the AI that powers it — type /setup in the chat and pick a local model via Ollama or ExLlamaV2 (everything stays on the board, fully offline), or a cloud provider such as DeepSeek, Gemini or Anthropic (maximum power, with built-in GDPR-ready anonymisation that strips names and identifiers before any request leaves the device). Common questions are answered in the FAQ.
The repository ships a complete series of plain-language guides, one for each aspect of the device. Each guide is short, written for the end user, and can be read on its own.
| Guide | What it covers |
|---|---|
| 00 · How it works | What an AI agent is, what tools are and how to enable them, the documents area, attachments |
| 01 · Getting started | Download, first start, the first indexing |
| 02 · Choosing your AI | Cloud and local providers, API keys, switching |
| 03 · Chatting with your agent | The chat window, files, sessions, the web version |
| 04 · Your documents area | The folder the agent reads, indexing, asking questions |
| 05 · Creating documents | Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF from a request |
| 06 · Email | Reading and sending mail with your account |
| 07 · Web research | Searching the internet, sources and reports |
| 08 · Voice | Dictating and hearing the assistant speak |
| 09 · Phone access | Calling the assistant, the PIN, voice calls |
| 10 · Telegram | Chatting with the assistant in Telegram |
| 11 · Scheduled tasks | Deadlines and recurring work the agent does alone |
| 12 · Podcasts | Complete podcast episodes from one request |
| 13 · Privacy and security | The sandbox, anonymisation, what leaves your device |
| 14 · The agent's memory | How the assistant remembers your work |
| 15 · Updates | How updates work and what they never touch |
The Orange PI AI Agent applies the same security model as AgentBridge, which is enforced by the program's own structure and not by instructions that a crafted message could bypass.
- Application-level sandbox — the assistant acts only through a small set of approved tools: it can read your documents, create files, send email and browse the web, but it cannot run arbitrary commands or touch anything outside its workspace.
- Data stays on the device — with a local model, nothing leaves the board at all. The only task that reaches the internet is web research, by design, and your documents are never sent along.
- GDPR-ready anonymisation — when you use a cloud provider, names, keys and sensitive identifiers are replaced before any request leaves the device and restored seamlessly in the reply.
- An update never touches your data — automatic updates replace only the program files; your documents, keys and configuration are protected by design.
What exactly is the Orange PI AI Agent? It is a self-hosted AI assistant appliance: an Orange Pi single-board computer running AgentBridge, a private server that automates office work — documents, spreadsheets, email, presentations, web research, phone and messaging — under your full control.
How is it different from a chatbot or an MCP server? A chatbot only answers in a chat window. The Orange PI AI Agent plans, uses tools, produces finished files and acts on its own schedule. Compared with traditional MCP setups, tools run natively inside the application sandbox with no separate servers or interpreters, which is faster and easier to run on modest hardware. The AgentBridge white paper explains the architecture.
Does it need an internet connection? No. With a local model, the assistant works fully offline. A connection is only needed to download updates, to browse the web for research, or when you explicitly choose a cloud provider.
Do my documents leave the device? No. The documents area is a plain folder on the board that the assistant reads directly. Only the model call can leave the device, and only when you pick a cloud provider — with anonymisation applied by default.
Which AI models can I use? Any. Local models via Ollama or ExLlamaV2, cloud providers such as DeepSeek, Z.ai, Gemini and Anthropic, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. You can switch at any time with a single command.
How much power does the board need? The Orange Pi 5 family is built for exactly this workload, and the speech engine runs on the CPU with no GPU required. For heavier cloud models, a normal internet connection is all you need.
How do I update it? Automatically. At every start the device checks for a newer release, installs it and restarts — while never touching your documents, keys or settings. Updates can be turned off from the menu if you prefer.
Is it free? The software is released as open source for personal use under the Andrea Bruno License 1.4. Commercial use of the code requires a royalty agreement with the author, as stated in the license.
| Product | Where it runs | Your data | Office tools | Phone & messaging |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orange PI AI Agent | Your own Orange Pi, on your desk | Stays on the device | Documents, spreadsheets, slides, PDF | SIP phone + Telegram |
| Cloud AI assistants | Vendor's servers | Read by the vendor | Chat-based, limited | Usually none |
| Proactive SaaS agents | Vendor's cloud | Synced to vendor | Task workflows | Limited |
The Orange PI AI Agent is the only option that combines an autonomous, tool-using agent with hardware you own, a flat cost, and the certainty that your archive never leaves the building.
- Installation guide — prerequisites, options, verification, updates, uninstall, troubleshooting
- Frequently asked questions — installation, usage, speech, privacy
- AgentBridge repository — the engine this device runs
- AgentBridge user manual — installation and configuration reference
- AgentBridge white paper — why the library model outperforms MCP deployments
- Graphene-Lab — the organisation behind the project
Andrea Bruno License 1.4 — open source for personal, educational and research use; commercial use requires a royalty agreement with the author.