NOVA-AI
Personal AI, On Personal Devices.
Why NOVA AI?
Personal AI agents are exploding in popularity, but nearly all of them still route intelligence through cloud APIs. Your “personal” AI continues to depend on someone else’s server. Local language models already handle most single-turn chat and reasoning queries, and their capability per watt keeps improving year over year. What has been missing is the software stack to make local-first personal AI practical.
NOVA AI is that stack. It is a framework for local-first personal AI, built around three core ideas: shared primitives for building on-device agents; evaluations that treat energy, FLOPs, latency, and dollar cost as first-class constraints alongside accuracy; and a learning loop that improves models using local trace data. The goal is simple: make it possible to build personal AI agents that run locally by default, calling the cloud only when truly necessary. NOVA AI aims to be both a research platform and a production foundation for local AI, in the spirit of PyTorch.
Installation & Quick Start
Pick your platform and start in seconds:
| Platform | Quick Launch | Installation One-liner |
|---|---|---|
| Windows (1-Click) | Double-click start.bat |
irm https://hamza35779.github.io/NOVA-AI/install.ps1 \| iex or run install.bat |
| Linux · macOS | ./start.sh |
curl -fsSL https://hamza35779.github.io/NOVA-AI/install.sh \| bash |
| Docker | docker compose -f deploy/docker/docker-compose.yml up |
Containerized setup with local Ollama engine |
| Desktop GUI | Download .exe / .dmg / .AppImage |
Latest Release |
Start Working with NOVA AI
# Interactive Chat
nova chat
# Hands-free Voice Conversation
nova voice --push-to-talk
# Smart Model Router (Auto-selects optimal model)
nova router status
nova router test "Analyze quantum algorithms"
# Active Memory Wiki
nova memory-wiki show profile
nova memory-wiki search "preferences"
# Interactive Canvas (Open HTML/SVG/Chart visualizations)
nova canvas list
# Presets & System Diagnostics
nova init --preset morning-digest-minimal
nova doctor
Prefix
nova ...withuv run, orsource .venv/bin/activatefirst.
| Preset | What it does |
|---|---|
morning-digest-mac / morning-digest-linux / morning-digest-minimal |
Spoken daily briefing from email, calendar, health, news |
deep-research |
Multi-hop research across indexed docs with citations |
code-assistant |
Agent with code execution, file I/O, and shell access |
scheduled-monitor |
Stateful agent on a schedule with memory |
chat-simple |
Lightweight conversation, no tools |
Example:
nova init --preset morning-digest-mac
nova connect gdrive # one OAuth covers Gmail / Calendar / Tasks
nova digest --fresh # generate and play your first briefing
Per-preset deep dives: morning digest · deep research · code assistant · scheduled monitor · chat simple · or the full quickstart guide.
Skills
Skills teach agents how to better use tools and improve their reasoning. Every skill is a tool — agents discover them from a catalog and invoke them on demand.
# Install skills from public sources
nova skill install hermes:arxiv
nova skill sync hermes --category research
# Use skills with any agent
nova ask "Use the code-explainer skill to explain this Python code: for i in range(5): print(i*2)"
# Optimize skills from your trace history
nova optimize skills --policy dspy
# Benchmark the impact
nova bench skills --max-samples 5 --seeds 42
Import from Hermes Agent (~150 skills), OpenClaw (~13,700 community skills), or any GitHub repo. Skills follow the agentskills.io open standard.
See the Skills User Guide and Skills Tutorial for details.
Built-in Agents
NOVA AI ships with eight built-in agents across three execution modes (on-demand, scheduled, continuous):
| Agent | Type | What it does |
|---|---|---|
morning_digest |
Scheduled | Daily briefing from email, calendar, health, news — with TTS audio |
deep_research |
On-demand | Multi-hop research with citations across web and local docs |
monitor_operative |
Continuous | Long-horizon monitoring with memory, compression, and retrieval |
orchestrator |
On-demand | Multi-turn reasoning with automatic tool selection |
native_react |
On-demand | ReAct (Thought-Action-Observation) loop agent |
operative |
Continuous | Persistent autonomous agent with state management |
native_openhands |
On-demand | CodeAct — generates and executes Python code |
simple |
On-demand | Single-turn chat, no tools |
See the User Guide and Tutorials for detailed setup instructions.
Full documentation — including Docker deployment, cloud engines, development setup, and tutorials — at hamza35779.github.io/NOVA-AI.
Community
- GitHub: github.com/Hamza35779/NOVA-AI
- Issues: github.com/Hamza35779/NOVA-AI/issues
Contributing
We welcome contributions! See the Contributing Guide for incentives, contribution types, and the PR process.
Quick start for contributors:
git clone https://github.com/Hamza35779/NOVA-AI.git
cd NOVA AI
uv sync --extra dev
uv run pre-commit install
uv run pytest tests/ -v
Browse the Roadmap for areas where help is needed. Comment “take” on any issue to get auto-assigned.