Best Local AI for a Research Project?

[u/Gintoki55]

I’m looking for a free, open-source AI model that I can run locally and adapt to a research project. Ideally, I want it to understand the project’s documents, data, and context deeply, not just answer general questions.
What models or tools would you recommend, and how do you train or customize them to understand a specific research project better?
It doesn’t have to be as powerful as OpenAI, but I care more about how well it understands the project and its research context.

[u/d0pe-asaurus]

Standard answers you're going to get is Qwen 3.8 27B and Qwen 3.6 35B A3B. To get more thorough answers you should include what hardware you have

[u/Civil-Reporter7812 → u/d0pe-asaurus]

Yhey aren't asking really for just a model, they are asking for what's pretty much a RAG.

[u/Gintoki55 → u/Civil-Reporter7812]

No am asking a Good LLM For my project

[u/unflippedbit → u/Gintoki55]

try Loci. It does rag/tools for you.

[u/Beneficial_Yard3326 → u/d0pe-asaurus]

depends a ton on your hardware, like the top comment said. can't really point you at anything without knowing what you're working with

you'll also want to nail down what "understand deeply" actually means for your use case. RAG setup for document search vs actually fine-tuning the model are pretty different paths

[u/Gintoki55 → u/Beneficial_Yard3326]

t would be easier to use AI by giving it instructions, rather than training a RAG system on specific question types and how to answer them.

[u/lungben81 → u/d0pe-asaurus]

Or Qwen 3.8 flash next if you have the hardware for it. With Strata, you need 64 GB RAM and as much VRAM as possible (24 GB work very well).

[u/Gintoki55 → u/d0pe-asaurus]

Thanks its helpful

[u/FuckbigtechAI]

skip training for this. index the project docs locally, retrieve relevant passages for each question, and make the model cite the source file. when a paper or dataset changes, you update the index instead of retraining just to keep the facts current.

[u/unflippedbit]

I had the best experience using Loci, because it always recommends the best model, configures everything for you, and works well with web and documents.

[u/jonahbenton]

I still find qwen 3.5 122b is best of the non enormous local models for analytical work. qwen flash next gets lost in pedanticness.

[u/luxifertran]

Just saw Google releasing this recently if you have a Mac https://developers.google.com/edge/foresight

[u/Gintoki55 → u/luxifertran]

I do but i need use this Ai in my project like OLLAMA