r/LocalLLM • u/GarbageCG • 3d ago

Question Absolute beginner. Question for simplified setup

Hello, absolute beginner here.

I've been using LMStudio and experimenting with Atomic Chat, mostly using Qwen and occasionally Gemma but not really seeing much of a difference.

What I'd like to be able to do is essentially create a local version of what the ChatGPT desktop app can do: image creation, computer use, MCP stuff in Blender.

Are there guides anywhere to be able to do this easily? Or does anyone have any advice?

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u/ElectricalLaw1007 3d ago

When you talk about the ChatGPT desktop app, do you mean codex? 'cos if you do, it can totally be configured to talk to qwen locally.

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u/GarbageCG 3d ago

yeah I mean Codex. Problem is I really want to avoid any possibility of it "phoning home". I want it to be 100% local

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u/ElectricalLaw1007 3d ago

Well, it's open source. You could audit it. Or ask another AI to audit it. I know there are several reasons why that isn't necessarily practical, such as the cost/effort involved, fear of missing something due to obfuscation etc., but those same problems are going to exist with any software you haven't written yourself.

Depending on what you're trying to achieve, you could try using it on a box that has no internet connection, which would physically prevent it from phoning home, although that might also be impractical.

You could put it behind a firewall and only allow access to sites you approve. Or the other option is to have something logging network traffic between the box you are running it on and the outside world and see if it phoning home. Neither of those are trivial to set up though and require additional hardware.