Here's something that started bothering me a while back: every AI assistant I tried — every single one — was sending my data somewhere else. My voice, my questions, my routines, my trading queries, my health data. All of it leaving my machine and landing on someone else's server. And I had absolutely no idea what was happening to it once it got there. No real answer from the companies, no transparency, just a privacy policy written by lawyers and a terms-of-service I'd never actually read. That felt wrong to me. So I decided to build something different.
What Hey Jarvis Actually Does
Hey Jarvis is a fully local, voice-activated AI assistant that runs entirely on my own hardware. No cloud. No subscription. No third-party server processing my requests. When I say "Hey Jarvis," the wake word is detected on-device, the model runs on-device, and the response comes back on-device. My data never leaves my machine. That's not a marketing claim — that's just how it's architected.
What you're seeing in the video above is a live demo of the Overwatch console — the dashboard I built to run alongside Hey Jarvis. Let me walk you through what's actually on screen, because it's a lot more than a fancy clock.
What's Running in the Video
Weather and radar. Real-time conditions pulled locally — current temperature, humidity, UV index, wind, and a live radar loop. No app, no browser tab, just a clean panel that updates automatically. I live in Tucson, so knowing the monsoon radar at a glance is genuinely useful.
Market data. Live price strips for SPY, QQQ, BTC, ETH, and SOL — my favorite coin and the one I watch most closely. These feed directly into my trading setup, which I'll get to in a second.
Headlines. Top news pulled and summarized locally. I can ask Jarvis to go deeper on any story, and it searches and synthesizes without routing the query through an external AI service.
Trading dashboard. This is where it gets interesting. I run an active grid trading strategy on ADA/USD and LINK/USD, and an RSI(2) system across a broader stock universe. The Overwatch console shows me live P&L, grid status, fill history, and signal state — all updated in real time. I can ask Jarvis for a full trading report and it generates one on the spot, pulling from local data sources.
Fitness tracking. My Strava activity feed is integrated directly. Weekly swim, bike, and run totals show up in the console. I can ask "what did I do this week?" and get a real answer without opening another app.
All of that — every panel, every data point, every voice command — runs on my hardware. That's the whole point.
Your Hardware, Your Rules
The thing that makes Hey Jarvis different isn't just the privacy angle, though that matters a lot to me. It's the control. When something isn't working the way I want, I can fix it. When I want to add a new capability — say, a new trading signal or a blog drafting tool — I build it and deploy it. There's no waiting for a feature update, no paying for a higher tier, no asking permission. It's my machine running my assistant by my rules.
I also don't pay a recurring subscription fee to use it. Once it's set up, the compute cost is basically nothing because it's already running on hardware I own. That's a fundamentally different economic model than what every major AI company is selling right now.
The how it works page goes deeper into the architecture — the wake-word engine, the local language model, the plugin system, and how the Overwatch console ties everything together. If you're technically curious, that's the place to start.
Should You Build One?
If you care about privacy, if you're tired of subscriptions, if you want an AI assistant that actually does what you need instead of what some product manager decided you need — then yes, I think you should build one. Or at the very least, you should understand what's possible. The gap between "this is a cool demo" and "this is running on my desk" is smaller than you'd think.
I put together everything you need to get started. The guide, the architecture decisions, the hardware recommendations, the software stack — it's all there. Head over to the Hey Jarvis product page and take a look. If you've ever wanted a personal AI assistant that works for you and only you, this is how you build it.
Ready to build your own? Get the full guide, architecture breakdown, and hardware recommendations on the Hey Jarvis product page →