ellai

Ellai is a personal AI assistant running locally in the terminal, powered by Ollama and local LLMs. It features a persistent memory system, web search capabilities, and the ability to dynamically write and run Python programs to accomplish tasks it couldn't handle otherwise.

Features

• Interactive Terminal Interface: Chat with Ellai directly from your terminal.
• Persistent Memory: Remembers user details, preferences, and context across sessions by saving them to ellai_memory.md.
• Tool Calling Capabilities:
  • web_search: Search the web for real-time information.
  • web_fetch: Fetch content from specific URLs.
  • add_to_memory: Persist important information.
  • play_song: Download and play a song from YouTube in the background.
  • ephemeral_creator: Write a Python script with any required dependencies and save it to a temp path.
  • ephemeral_runner: Execute the previously created script via uv run, with dependencies auto-installed.
• Thinking Process: Supports model "thinking" / Chain-of-Thought (CoT) processes for supported models.

How to Use

Prerequisites

• Python: Version 3.10 or higher.
• uv: Required to manage dependencies and run the project. Install it from docs.astral.sh/uv. Also required at runtime for the ephemeral_creator/ephemeral_runner tools.
• Ollama: Must be installed and running locally. You can download and install it from ollama.com/download.
• Tool Calling Model: Since Ellai actively relies on tools for memory and web access, the model used in Ollama must support tool calling. The default model is qwen3.5:4b.
• API Key: A free API key from Ollama is needed for the web_search and web_fetch features to work properly. Ensure you have obtained and configured it.
• ffmpeg / ffplay (optional): Required for the play_song tool. Install via your system package manager (e.g. sudo pacman -S ffmpeg or sudo apt install ffmpeg).

Installation & Running

Start a chat in the terminal by running:

uv run python -m src.main

Alternatively, you can run the Gradio web application:

uv run python -m src.gradio.gradio_app