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Private AI for small businesses, from setups people actually run.

A filterable database of real, sourced self-hosted AI builds: the hardware, the software stack, the models, what works, what doesn't, and how to start. Keep client data on your own machines.

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Documented build

Mac Studio M2 Max (64GB) as a private coding assistant

A freelancer working on client code ran a fully local stack for 3 months: Ollama + Qwen2.5-Coder-32B via Continue.dev, with Open WebUI for longer chats.

SoloCoding$3k+Sensitivity: High

Source: r/LocalLLaMA

Documented build

Headless Ubuntu box with RTX 3090 serving code completion to laptops

A developer runs Ollama on a headless Ubuntu desktop with an RTX 3090 and connects laptops via the Continue VS Code plugin. The 32B model was too heavy in practice, so 7B is used.

Solo2-10 peopleCoding$1k-3kSensitivity: High

Source: Arul Selvam Periyasamy (blog)

Field report (bug thread)

Keeping Continue + Qwen 7B within VRAM on Ubuntu

A GitHub issue documents that Continue used ~9.5GB VRAM vs ~6GB for the same model in the Ollama CLI, fixed by lowering contextLength and maxTokens.

Solo2-10 peopleCodingUse existing hardwareSensitivity: Standard

Source: GitHub continuedev/continue #6609

Documented build

Mac mini M4 (16GB) personal RAG assistant reachable from your phone

AnythingLLM + Ollama (llama3.1:8b) on a Mac mini M4, exposed through a Cloudflare Tunnel protected by Cloudflare Access, queried from Telegram via n8n.

SoloDocument search / chat with filesUnder $1kSensitivity: Standard

Source: Ovidiu Eftimie (Substack)

Tested workflow

Starter document Q&A on one computer (AnythingLLM + Qwen2.5 3B)

A careful workflow for chatting with documents on a single machine, including a hallucination test (ask a question the document can't answer).

SoloDocument search / chat with filesUse existing hardwareSensitivity: High

Source: localai.computer

Official recipe

IBM Granite + AnythingLLM local RAG on a laptop

IBM's Granite community recipe for running a basic local RAG over a PDF (e.g. a budget document) on your laptop.

Solo2-10 peopleDocument search / chat with filesUse existing hardwareSensitivity: High

Source: IBM Granite Community (GitHub)

Guide (recommended spec)

Law office bookshelf server: Mac mini M4 Pro 48GB + AnythingLLM per matter

A local legal stack guide: a silent Mac mini M4 Pro with 48GB unified memory running Ollama with one AnythingLLM workspace per matter, plus encryption and a written AI policy.

Solo2-10 peopleDocument search / chat with filesWriting assistant$1k-3kSensitivity: Very high

Source: runlocalai.co

Community discussion

4-person litigation firm weighing a Mac Studio M3 Ultra

A 1-attorney/1-paralegal/2-admin firm asked if a Mac Studio M3 Ultra could handle file sorting and first-pass record review. Replies say hardware is the easy part; PDF/OCR ingestion and guardrails are the real work.

2-10 peopleDocument search / chat with files$3k+Sensitivity: Very high

Source: r/LocalLLM

Documented build

RTX 3060 server: private call transcription with faster-whisper

Audio uploaded from a phone PWA is transcribed on a local RTX 3060 (12GB) with faster-whisper int8, sharing the card with an embedding model and Gemma.

Solo2-10 peopleTranscriptionUnder $1kSensitivity: High

Source: DEV Community (hannune)

Open-source project

Central GPU Whisper API for a small team (Docker)

whisper_api offloads transcription to one GPU server shared by several people; the author suggests the RTX 3060 12GB as the cheapest option for high-quality models.

2-10 people11-50 peopleTranscriptionUnder $1kSensitivity: High

Source: MayNiklas/whisper_api (GitHub)

Documented build (video)

Proxmox + NVIDIA A4000 'AI Basecamp' reachable anywhere via Tailscale

Tailscale's Alex Kretzschmar passes an NVIDIA A4000 through to a NixOS VM on Proxmox, runs Ollama + Open WebUI in Docker, and exposes it privately with Tailscale Serve (TLS, no reverse proxy).

Solo2-10 peopleWriting assistantCodingDocument search / chat with files$1k-3kSensitivity: High

Source: Tailscale blog

Company case study

Customer support bot over company docs (Open WebUI + Llama 3 8B)

Hosting provider HOSTKEY built a tech-support assistant for its front-line team: cleaned Markdown docs, Open WebUI RAG (ChromaDB), a custom model with a strict system prompt.

11-50 peopleCustomer supportDocument search / chat with filesUnder $1kSensitivity: Standard

Source: HOSTKEY blog

Community advice

Startup moving off OpenAI API: used dual RTX 3090 build

A small startup asked for the cheapest way to self-host; a top suggestion was to buy used and build around 2x 24GB RTX 3090s for a 32B model.

2-10 peopleCustomer supportWriting assistant$1k-3kSensitivity: High

Source: r/ollama

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