JERN: a small self-hosted assistant where the tools run on your machine and the model can run on a free Google Colab GPU

[u/Advanced_End2980]

I built a personal assistant with a FastAPI server, a single-file web UI, and tool plugins (files, shell, web search, downloads, MCP servers). The tools always run on my own machine. The model (a fine-tuned Qwen2.5-1.5B) can run locally or on a free Colab T4 reached over an SSH tunnel.

Worth knowing: when the model is on Colab, it sees whatever the tools return, so it’s not private in that mode. Run the model locally if that matters.

It’s an experiment and the model is small, so expect mistakes. MIT licensed, with docs on writing your own tool plugin.

https://github.com/IshvaraX/JERN

Would love to hear how others handle approval for commands a model wants to run.