High Desert Institute
Librarian
A free, open-source digital librarian that runs on local hardware, answers questions from your own Library, and stays connected to the mesh via Meshtastic.
The Librarian
The Librarian is a privacy-first knowledge steward that runs entirely on your own hardware—typically a Raspberry Pi paired with a Meshtastic node. Communities can load their local Library with PDFs, text files, videos, and field guides, then ask questions in natural language over Wi-Fi or the Cyberpony Express mesh. Because everything is offline, the Librarian keeps working when the public internet fails.
Features
- Local LLM – Runs a lightweight model via Ollama so prompts never leave the outpost.
- Meshtastic integration – Offers a text interface over the mesh and can plug into RAG pipelines to cite local documents.
- Custom knowledge base – Drop new books or manuals into the Library and the Librarian immediately knows about them.
- Multi-modal delivery – Answers can be served over Wi-Fi with attachments or trimmed down to mesh-friendly text.
- Open source and extensible – All code lives in the HDI GitHub org, inviting contributions from guild members worldwide.
This project is hosted in a submodule.