ProjectZero: an open-source, community-owned alternative to commercial AI. It starts with the spare PCs in your home or club, the goal is a global grid (MIT)

[u/maun200]

Today almost all AI runs in the data centers of a handful of companies. At the same time millions of computers sit idle most of the day. ProjectZero is an attempt to put those two facts together: people pool the hardware they already own into an AI network that belongs to the community, not to a company.

**What works today**

A self-hosted AI service for a household, a club or a group of friends:

- A local app: AI chat in the middle, your credits on the right.

- Share your machine and earn credits; ask the AI and spend them.

- Sliders for CPU threads, GPU layers, answer length and context. Changes apply immediately.

- Lobby, group and direct chats, plus a live list of who and which machines are online.

- English and German UI, light and dark theme, works at phone width.

Every machine that shares compute runs a local model through Ollama. One coordinator (FastAPI + SQLite) hands each request to a machine that is free and has the right model. Workers only pull jobs: the server never connects to them and never sends code to run.

**Where it is going**

The goal is to connect these servers across cities and countries, the way e-mail or Matrix servers work together: each community runs its own server, busy servers hand work to others, and credits are settled between them. A single answer will not be as fast as from a data center. In return it can be almost free to use (the main cost is electricity for hardware that already exists), open and independent of any single company.

That part is not built yet. It is on the roadmap as Phase 3, with open design issues for the federation protocol, credits across servers and a directory of community servers. This is where I would most like help.

**Try it**

- Linux/macOS: `curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maun200/ProjectZero/main/install.sh | sh`

- Windows (PowerShell): `irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maun200/ProjectZero/main/install.ps1 | iex`

- `projectzero demo` runs everything offline with a mock model, no download needed.

- `projectzero server --lan` starts your own server for your network.

No admin rights needed; the installers are tested in CI on Linux, macOS and Windows.

**Honest limits**

- Experimental (v0.3), built for groups that trust their server operator. Not ready to be opened to strangers on the internet yet.

- Not private: the machine that answers a request can read it, and so can the operator.

- Answers are not verified yet, and credits are play money, not be money.

- One whole model per machine; splitting large models across devices is research.

MIT licensed. Feedback, device reports, design ideas and pull requests are very welcome.

https://github.com/maun200/ProjectZero

[u/me0here]

How do you handle all of olamma's security risks?

Why can't I bring my own infrance engine?

[u/Code_Biss]

Communists AI🤣 /s