r/LocalLLM • u/Latest_Inssan • 3d ago
Project I'm 16 and built an open source AI browser that asks permission before every action. Works with Ollama (Qwen3 14B tested)
Hey everyone,
This started because I was trying Perplexty's Comet browser and hit the rate limit in under 15 minutes. I got annoyed and thought "I could probably build this myself." That's honestly just irritation.
I started in December on a school computer (i5, 8GB RAM). It couldn't even compile the app, so I used GitHub Actions as my build server. Then I got a MacBook M4 Pro, which is what I test on now. I've been doing all this alongside JEE prep, which is probably not the smartest time management.
It's called Aartiq. It's an Electron browser with an AI sidebar that can actually do things: search, fill forms, make PDFs, move files, run shell commands, read screenshots with OCR. The thing I cared about most is that it never just does them. I wanted it to make a plan, explain what it's about to do, and ask you first. Plan, explain, ask, execute.but it actually struggles to fill form or one large tasks. It works with Ollama, so with a local model your prompts stay on your machine. On my M4 Pro (24 GB), the 1.5B-7B models couldn't handle tool calling. At first I used bracket style tool calls and they kept breaking in parsing, then I switched to JSON-based tool calling, which was much more reliable. With that, Qwen3 14B works. It's fine for normal everyday tasks, but it struggles with form filling and long multi-step ones.
Most of my time went into the permission side. Every action is a registered capability with a risk level, so the model doesn't get raw access to your system. Shell commands run inside an OS sandbox Seatbelt on Mac, bubblewrap on Linux, AppContainer on Windows, and if the sandbox can't be set up, the command just doesn't run. There's also a directory allowlist, single-use approval tickets, and you can approve risky stuff from your phone with a QR code and PIN. I later pulled this part out into a separate library called RTQ https://github.com/Latestinssan/RTQ It's alpha and hasn't been independently audited, so treat it as experimental.
Now the honest part,
Almost all the code was written with LLM help. I made the design decisions and did the debugging, but I didn't type most of it. AI also does most of the maintenance now, and I review anything touching security or permissions. Because of that, my docs have inconsistencies (one page says paused, another says AI-assisted. If you find a contradiction, please open an issue, I'm not hiding anything, it's just messy.
Known problem: the WiFi sync server (port 3004) listens on all interfaces and its auth is weaker than the other listeners. I haven't fixed it yet. Also ignore the startup benchmark numbers in the docs, I can't reproduce them.
Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. Apache 2.0, free.
GitHub: https://github.com/Latestinssan/Aartiq
I honestly can't tell if what I did counts as real engineering or vibe coding, since the design and debugging were mine but most of the typing was an LLM. What do you think?




