// cat case-file.md
A.D.A
LOCAL VOICE AI · IN DEVELOPMENT
Agentic Dialogue Assistant — a personal voice assistant that listens, thinks and acts. Everything runs on your own devices — an always-on laptop, a gaming laptop for the heavy lifting and your phone: no cloud, no subscription, and no audio ever leaves your machines.
Say her name and talk normally, and she answers out loud — setting reminders, taking notes, looking things up, waking you in the morning. She never changes anything without your "yes". Named after Ada Lovelace.
3
of your own devices
0
cloud services · fully local
6
orb states
MIT
open source
// ada --principles
Voice-first
Wake her with a phrase, speak naturally, and interrupt her when you need to.
Local
Speech, language model and memory all run on your own machines — nothing phones home.
Agentic
She uses tools to get things done — set reminders, take notes, look things up — not just to chat.
Secure by design
Safety rules are enforced in code, not left to the model's judgement. The model proposes; the code decides.
// architecture --two-nodes
Ada is split across two machines so the heavy models never block the conversation, with a phone as her reach into the outside world.
Hub
ALWAYS-ON
Listens for her name, manages the conversation and speaks the reply. Hosts the voice loop, tools, memory and the orb HUD.
GPU node
SECOND LAPTOP
Turns speech into text (faster-whisper) and runs the language model (Ollama · qwen3:8b). Does the heavy lifting off the Hub.
Phone
REACH
Receives alarms and works as a remote, over self-hosted ntfy on a private Tailscale network.
FALLBACK BRAIN
The GPU node is a gaming laptop that leaves the house, so before each request the Hub checks it's reachable. If it isn't, Ada answers with a smaller model on the Hub's own CPU (qwen3:4b / 1.7b) and the orb's core dims to show it — and reminders and alarms never depend on the GPU node at all.
// her-face --orb
Ada shows what she is doing through a living particle orb (Three.js). Each state is a different way information moves through her — inward while she listens, back and forth while she thinks, outward while she speaks. Orange appears only when she is waiting for your approval; red only when something has failed.
On the desktop the orb lives in a small always-on-top pop-up in a corner of the screen — it appears when you say her name, fades out when the conversation ends, and opens the full dashboard on a click (pywebview + a pystray tray icon).
// security --model-proposes-code-decides
Ada is built with an attacker's mindset. Everything that could be abused is constrained in code, never left to the model's judgement.
Allowlisted tools
She can only call tools on an allowlist — no shell, no payments, no sending messages.
Confirmation-gated
Anything that changes something waits for your confirmation. Silence means no.
Data, not instructions
Web pages and notes are treated as data, never as commands — a prompt-injection defense baked into the design.
Append-only audit log
Every tool call is written to an audit log; nothing she does is invisible.
Nothing exposed
No service is reachable from the internet; devices talk only over a private Tailscale network, with no router ports opened.
Guarded repository
A gitleaks pre-commit hook, a CI secret scan and GitHub push protection keep keys and personal data out of git.
// stack --list
VOICE
openWakeWord
Silero VAD
Smart Turn
Pipecat
faster-whisper
Kokoro TTS
AI & TOOLS
Ollama · qwen3:8b (GPU)
fallback · qwen3:4b/1.7b (CPU)
FastMCP
tool allowlist
MEMORY & SCHEDULE
SQLite
Chroma
APScheduler
HUD & INFRA
FastAPI
WebSocket
Three.js
pywebview
pystray
ntfy
Tailscale
// roadmap --phases
A long build, taken one provable step at a time.
[~]
Phase 0 — Setup · repo, guardrails, machines talking (in progress)
[ ]
Phase 1 — Parts · each component proven on its own
[ ]
Phase 2 — First words · wake, listen, think, answer; fallback brain
[ ]
Phase 3 — Face · the orb follows her real state; desktop pop-up & dashboard
[ ]
Phase 4 — Hands · tools, confirmation and audit log
[ ]
Phase 5 — Memory · remembers what you tell her, forgets on request
[ ]
Phase 6 — Her name · custom wake phrase, natural interruptions
[ ]
Phase 7 — Reach · phone alarms and remote
[ ]
Phase 8 — v1 · hardening, prompt-injection defense, release
Later: French, calendar & email, Arabic, vision.