Jenny: A Free Open-Source Desktop App for Running Local LLMs
Developer /u/TangySword has released Jenny, a free and open-source (MIT licensed) Electron desktop application designed to run local LLMs privately. The app combines a chat interface with built-in tool calling, chat rollback capabilities, and an integrated IDE. As users seek data privacy and alternatives to cloud-based AI subscriptions, open-source local LLM desktop apps provide complete ownership over personal workflows. Jenny enhances local AI usability by offering safety mechanisms like required approval for destructive shell commands and automated code checkpointing. Jenny connects to backend engines such as llama.cpp, vLLM, and OpenAI-compatible local endpoints, using GGUF models via a managed llama-server. The application is currently stable on Windows, while macOS remains untested and Linux is not currently supported.
## BACKGROUND
A local LLM harness acts as an orchestration layer and user interface that allows open-weight AI models to execute directly on a user's local hardware without sending data to external servers. Tool calling (or function calling) is an feature that allows an LLM to interact with external environments by reading files, modifying calendar entries, or executing system commands.