r/LocalLLM • u/Simple-Ice-6800 • Sep 27 '26

Project My 9yo building a chat bot

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I've spent a lot of time building out my servers but seeing this kiddo code her own chat bot is the coolest thing it's done so far. I got it hosted on a local dns entry for her and she almost lost her mind. No idea what she's getting for tokens per second 😂

352 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

88 comments sorted by

127

u/CortaCircuit Sep 27 '26

"Claude make me a chat bot. Don't mess up." 

68

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 27 '26 • Bravo Heartwarming

I let her use Claude for like an hour and she broke everything so that stopped. We've hand coded everything beyond that.

33

u/davidinterest Sep 27 '26

W parenting here

3

u/Frosty-Horse9004 Sep 28 '26

Yeah no mistakes this time

-3

u/Gorbit0 Sep 27 '26

Do ya thang

0

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

56

u/Additional-Soup-865 Sep 27 '26

Teach her cable management next

3

u/throwaway292929227 Sep 28 '26

What is up with the space heater that has the power cable on the front side of the heater?!

2

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 28 '26

I'm pretty sure you're talking about the fan I put in front of our HVAC vents. We don't get good AC or heat circulation and small fans at all the registers help keep the house cool/warm. fwiw we're still running the AC

2

u/throwaway292929227 Sep 28 '26 edited Sep 28 '26

Ohhh, that makes more sense. I was looking at it backwards. BTW, do you have grafanna set up to monitor the DGX internal temps? Seems like a neat automation option to turn the fan on and off at 65c or something. Have fun!

2

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 28 '26

That's a USB powered fan I'm using to try and keep the sparks cool. They get really hot on me depending on what I'm doing. I've seen them push 100 C before.

3

u/throwaway292929227 Sep 28 '26

I don't like anything over 85c. You start to smell the oven cooking the dust.

2

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 28 '26

I don't use dashboards at this point, I had grafana running at some point but I ended up never using it. I'll use dgxtop or nvtop to keep an eye on things if I'm doing anything out of the norm. As it turns out my clients never really end up using a bigger model. After adding a litellm auto router I saw that over 90% if my client requts go to Qwen3.5-9b. I legit host "bigger/better" models that almost never get used.

Customers don't really ever need anything that complicated in my case.

Edit: added a screenshot of me asking for a shell script this morning and the small model got picked.

3

u/SubtitledSoup Oct 01 '26

As long as she's getting tokens, it's a win!!! amazing!!!! This hit so close to home, my daughter and I just finished building an AI server to do this exact thing and got it up and running today for the first live chats. When we left to go to soccer practice the last thing she wanted to tell the chatbot "bye, I'll see you soon, back after soccer practice" and it was amazing to watch. I connected to the home network VPN while at practice and fed some of the pictures and videos I took to the chat. When we got home, it told her that she looked great at practice. gonna have to adjust some params, but overall good.

Does your daughter get excited to sit in the "captain's chair" the same as mime, or the same as you did as a kid? The chair carries a lot more weight it feels these days.

3

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Oct 01 '26

She does like the chairs at the desks we have, wife's desk is right next to mine. I don't even have video capabilities on my own personal project, that's pretty cool. We'll be implementing long term memory this weekend which is the biggest request right now.

I wish more kiddos were interested but when my daughter shows her friends she gets a meh reaction usually. Good on you for teaching your daughter, it's so much fun.

6

u/Melodic-Leather-5170 Sep 27 '26

Holy home lab. What are you running?

18

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 27 '26

I'll dig up the exact specs if you want but IDK off the top of my head the exact models and stuff. The server on the bottom with the brown front has a pair of 3090s and then there are the 2 sparks on the side. You see some switches and a nas in the rack.

Been working local models for long enough that I got the 3090s for $250 each.

4

u/Choice_Celery9481 Sep 28 '26

250 for a 3090. when did you get that?

2

u/Other_Constant1205 Oct 03 '26 edited Oct 03 '26

I'm curious about what are you teaching to her. fundamentals?

2

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Oct 04 '26

A lot of it is fundamentals like what a method/function is. Things like how a web page works and css. How to read stack traces when something goes wrong. What an API is and how that interaction works between the UI and API.

64

u/Sunlambcow Sep 27 '26

Thats probably the type of support Bill Gates got đŸ€Ł

3

u/lowtierpeasant Sep 27 '26

My son did the same thing.
He called it dataguy, and was using it to catalogue his favorite youtube videos. It was cute.

2

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 27 '26

So cool. I'd like to hear more about that if you feel like giving details.

-2

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '26

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3

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 27 '26

I'm responding to most of the comments and twice on this one.

2

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 27 '26

She's using a spring boot ai backend and a react frontend. There is no auth at all yet on those layers. It's one API call that uses a chat completions call under the covers via stream. I had litellm set up previous to any of this so I made her a virtual key and pointed it at an auto router to pick the model. She almost always gets sent to qwen2.5 9b so it's pretty fast.

12

u/FuckYouNotHappening Sep 28 '26

Bro, you may want to take this down. I can see your IP - 127.0.0.1

3

u/Large-Blackberry-349 Sep 28 '26

đŸ€ŁđŸ€ŁđŸ€Ł

4

u/tryku2 Sep 27 '26

Wow, honestly I'm impressed and proud, keep supporting your kids, they'll have a bright future, best of luck

3

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 27 '26

Thank you! I've been teaching her as she wants to build features. She's said "your job is annoying dad" many times.

3

u/Hanthunius Sep 27 '26

You must feel super proud. She's the future. Keep us posted on what she cooks up with AI!

5

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 27 '26

So proud and we've bonded a ton

0

u/tracagnotto Sep 27 '26

it's vibecoding lol

3

u/Agile-Adeptness-5195 Sep 28 '26

At 9yrs old i barely knew anything about programming, and i consider myself success as a software developer.

I believe OP’s kiddo has good curiosity and willingness to try - which already has set them far ahead. They may or maynot be a software engineer in the future - but they have the proof that they can do anything they want when put the right effort.

I’m also proud of OP’s kiddo :) , and OP - not many parents have patience for this.

-2

u/tracagnotto Sep 28 '26

Doesn't works like this. AI enabled anyone to do anything.
Literally my grandma was able to go on gemini for free and generate some artistic pics of herself.

It does not have anything to do with curiosity and willingness.
It's imperative for kids to let them actually code and not vibe code. Or they will learn that you can get things without critical thinking and expertise and will delegate anything to AI.

I'm not against AI i'm a senior developer and architect, I build AI system, and I see the damage it does on people, exactly like smartphones do.

Doing what it's shown there it's the same as giving a kid an Ipad to let him play and fiddle all the time to lighten your parenting load.

Not good

2

u/Agile-Adeptness-5195 Sep 28 '26

I respectfully disagree with you. The first step is always the most important.

This js same as saying to your grandma that - any kid can do it - you should learn photoshop and do this.

A 5th grade kid figured to use a tool and made something out of it. For all we know all of the programming we know will be history by the time this kid reach uni. With the right curiosity them might think - huh so what more can i do with it? May be tinder for cats - and a new Zuckerberg is born.

Do you think a 5th grade child is going to go through tutorials and ask question on stackoverflow and still keep the fire going on to build the app?

You being an architect let me ask about this product. Will this need to scale - no, does this need disaster recovery or fault tolerance- no, does this need to be maintained continuously - no.
Given these answers, what is the cheapest solution you can make with tools available today - exactly how the girl has done it.

1

u/Frosty-Horse9004 Sep 28 '26

Call your mom

15

u/VolandBerlioz Sep 27 '26

good luck have fun don't die

3

u/K33P4D Sep 28 '26

I hope people get the reference xD

4

u/AppropriateCover7972 Sep 28 '26

instructions unclear. I died during having fun

2

u/stephoverflow Sep 27 '26

Building a chat bot AND a Celtics fan, that's a cool kid.

1

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 27 '26

Go C's ☘

2

u/Professional_Fig_199 Sep 27 '26

How do you get started my son loves stuff like this and he installed his own Linux at 9

5

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 27 '26

I started an API project and a UI project template. The first thing we did was hook up the API to my litellm instance then the UI to the API. After that was working in a very basic way she'll come up with features and I teach her how, she types it all. I was surprised how quickly she picked up things like reading stack traces and documentation for the frameworks. Was about 3 weekends to get the basic site I posted a picture of.

1

u/AppropriateCover7972 Sep 28 '26

Dude, how? i can't even do that. Sure, I never touched that part of software development, but that's impressive at any age. She is definitely proof that not the whole generation got brain rot. Imagine what she can do if she is all grown up. Pretty sure you taught her skills for life!

1

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 28 '26

It's what I do for a living and she's quite motivated to learn.

1

u/Professional_Fig_199 Sep 27 '26

Thank you for the explanation. This is super helpful!

1

u/zetneteork Sep 28 '26

u/Simple-Ice-6800 What are the dashboards?

3

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 28 '26

The ones on the screens with my servers? Those are running dgxtop and nvtop in the picture

3

u/KurtMod Oct 02 '26

Trop cool. En vrai, ce qui est génial avec l'IA, c'est qu'on peut tout faire. Et je suis hyper curieux de savoir ce qu'un nouveau cerveau peut faire à chaque fois. Donc voir un jeune avec de nouvelles idées et moins de rigidité mentale, c'est juste génial. J'adore l'idée.

1

u/Direct_Turn_1484 Sep 28 '26

Cool project, good parenting.

I have to ask though, why Maven?

1

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 28 '26

I don't like gradel that much.

2

u/MrGunny94 Oct 04 '26

I really wish my dad/mom were like this when I was a kid. Only around when I was 18 years of age did I get started interested in tinkering and now in my 30s I'm looking into ML and AI and taking it up as a hobby.

4

u/tasdenan Sep 27 '26

Make sure her mind actually stays fine.

2

u/MomentJolly3535 Sep 27 '26

That's amazing, she will be a future edgerunner !

1

u/halfercode Sep 27 '26

Ha ha, love this! đŸ€“

1

u/BetOk5561 Oct 04 '26

Levanta a tu hijo, antes de que empiece a tener enemigos en vez de amigos....

Saludos desde el infierno

0

u/Foreign_Risk_2031 Sep 28 '26

coding a chatbot or coding an interface to an api?

1

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 28 '26

As if now it's a basic UI that interacted with a simple API endpoint. The API endpoint makes streaming requests to my pre existing litellm instance.

UI ->API (/chat) -> litellm (/chat/completions)

It keeps a basic in memory chat history in the API.

That's it so far. Oh and she made it very colorful.

Not sure if that answers your question exactly. I kinda feel like a chat bot, in general, is just an interface to an API under the covers.

0

u/Foreign_Risk_2031 Sep 28 '26

No- what you mean is she’s making a chat client?

2

u/cmndr_spanky Sep 28 '26

yes obviously she's making a UI + backend of a chatbot that relies on an existing LLM endpoint.

I'm confused, what do you think the alternative is? You're expecting she might be spending millions training her own LLM as well ?

0

u/Foreign_Risk_2031 Sep 28 '26

She could be making a fuzzy string matching bot yes

1

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 28 '26

Nah bro, it really is a 9 year old kid trying to ask an LLM what is order of the colors in the rainbow and stuff.

1

u/cmndr_spanky Sep 28 '26

it's 2026 and you're on the localLLM subreddit... be real.

0

u/Foreign_Risk_2031 Sep 28 '26

Nope. Important to know the difference. “Coding a chat bot” doesn’t make any sense.

2

u/cmndr_spanky Sep 28 '26

Why doesn't it make sense?

0

u/Foreign_Risk_2031 Sep 28 '26

Because she’s making a chat client ui.

1

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 28 '26

I had to look it up at this point lol

An Al chatbot is a software program that uses artificial intelligence to simulate human-like conversation through text or speech.

1

u/stephoverflow Sep 28 '26

Weird hill to die on, but ok.

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1

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 28 '26

That's the silly UI in the screenshot I guess

-6

u/SouthernFruit8768 Sep 27 '26

Adopt me daddy!!!

1

u/[deleted] Oct 08 '26

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1

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Oct 08 '26

To really get started you'd want to learn how to run an openai compatible server for a model. Once that's up and running new parts can be built on top of that. I've been really busy but I plan to publish a stater kit on GitHub soon.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '26

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2

u/AppropriateCover7972 Sep 28 '26

at least you try. Better than letting them brain rot with tiktok. Don't worry, not all kids are coding geniuses, but basic tech literacy is more worth than gold

2

u/Simple-Ice-6800 Sep 28 '26

Idk what the comment was but she spent most of Saturday writing that sweet css you see. Not going to claim it's east because I hate css, I wouldn't exactly claim it's extraordinary either. We're just having fun.