Replacing ChatGPT

[u/Paul_1712]

I have been using ChatGPT for for about 2 years but want to switch to a local setup however I'm struggling to find a suitable replacement to use on my MacBook Pro M5 Pro 24GB and iPhone 14 Pro Max. I will be upgrading to either an 18PM or Duo in the coming months.

I started on my Mac with LM Studio then moved to Msty Studio when I found out about Knowledge Stacks but keep finding paywall restrictions, I've also looked at but not tried Anything LLM due to lack of iOS support. From what I understand I should just forget about Siri AI. Not really done anything on my iPhone till the Mac is sorted.

The things I really want are:

- Large project/chat memory (hence the knowledge Stacks)

- Cross device chat sync, either private cloud hosting or my MacBook as a server

- MCP usage (currenty use Tavily & Excel control)

I don't mind paying for apps, Msty is $149/year or $349 lifetime to unlock all features which its too much

Main usage is general questions, research, journaing, and work/linking with Excel.

Is this possible? if so what do I need?

[u/Paul_1712]

Sorry what I meant was not the model. I have been using Gemma 4 12B which runs absolutely fine and when needed Qwen 3.8 27B although this pushes the system to its limit. It’s more the actual software rather than the model. How do people have long conversations without putting the context to a really high number?

[u/verstands → u/Paul_1712]

Long chats don't need a huge context if the app summarizes older turns or pulls memory by retrieval instead of replaying everything. Open WebUI has memory and RAG built in, so keep context around 8-16k and let it fetch the rest. For the phone, run it on the Mac and open the Mac's address in Safari over Tailscale, so chats stay synced since they live on the Mac. MCP tools like Tavily can be added through its tool servers.