Hob brings Claude- and ChatGPT-style file workflows to an open-source desktop app that runs models locally

Hob is a free, MIT-licensed desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux that uses open-weight models Gemma 4 and gpt-oss to work with local files, images, and code. It supports offline use, web search, and user-added MCP connectors; its author says systems with 16+ GB of RAM performed well in his own evaluations, while acknowledging local models are weaker than frontier cloud models.

For teams handling sensitive files, Hob’s local processing and sandboxed code execution could reduce exposure to hosted services, but web search and added MCP connectors still go online. The author’s evaluations are limited to his own tests, so performance on specific hardware and larger or complex files remains an open question.