Helix apply -f deploy YAML GenAI with RAG and APIs on local open models [video]
Demo starts at 50m into the video. This was a bit terrifying to record because 2am the previous night everything was totally broken after a major refactor (so that we could add external LLM support as well as local GPUs). But pressure can be a useful force :-D We start with a stack deployed on my laptop without a GPU, pointing to together.ai so we can run open source LLMs easily without having to have access to a GPU. We show simple inference through the ChatGPT-like web interface (with users, sessions etc) and then simple drag'n'drop RAG. Then we show some helix apps defined as yaml: Marvin…
What it does
In the maker’s words, at launch
Demo starts at 50m into the video. This was a bit terrifying to record because 2am the previous night everything was totally broken after a major refactor (so that we could add external LLM support as well as local GPUs). But pressure can be a useful force :-D We start with a stack deployed on my laptop without a GPU, pointing to together.ai so we can run open source LLMs easily without having to have access to a GPU. We show simple inference through the ChatGPT-like web interface (with users, sessions etc) and then simple drag'n'drop RAG. Then we show some helix apps defined as yaml: Marvin the Paranoid Android (just a system prompt on top of llama3:8b), an HR app that interacts with an API, and a surprise API integration I'd done that morning with the podcast host's own OpenAPI spec for their app Screenly. Finally, we deploy it for real on a DigitalOcean droplet for the controlplane - see https://docs.helix.ml/helix/getting-started/architecture/ - and a $0.35/h A40 on runpod.io. Armed with a real GPU, we can do image inference and fine-tuning as well as all the things described above!
Does the same job
all alternatives →- WMWe made glhf.chat – run almost any open-source LLM, including 405B2024 · glhf.chat · ▲161
Try it out! https://glhf.chat/ Hey HN! We’ve been working for the past few months on a website to let you easily run (almost) any open-source LLM on autoscaling GPU clusters. It’s free for now while we figure out how to price it, but we expect to be cheaper than most GPU offerings since we can run the models multi-tenant. Unlike Together AI, Fireworks, etc, we’ll run any model that the open-source vLLM project supports: we don’t have a hardcoded list. If you want a specific model or finetune, you don’t have to ask us for it: you can just paste the Hugging Face link in and…
- OROllama – Run LLMs on your Mac2023 · github.com · ▲284
Hi HN A few folks and I have been working on this project for a couple weeks now. After previously working on the Docker project for a number of years (both on the container runtime and image registry side), the recent rise in open source language models made us think something similar needed to exist for large language models too. While not exactly the same as running linux containers, running LLMs shares quite a few of the same challenges. There are "base layers" (e.g. models like Llama 2), specific configuration to run correctly (parameters, temperature, context window sizes etc). There's…
- BLBuild Live AI and RAG Pipelines in Minutes with YAML Templates2024 · pathway.com · ▲8
Hello everyone! I am Jan, CTO and one of the creators of Pathway, the real-time data processing framework. I’m excited to share Pathway’s ready-to-use AI Pipelines, configurable with just YAML! These frameworks offer out-of-the-box solutions for AI search, RAG, and more—optimized for real-time indexing and in-memory processing. What makes it simple? YAML templates! The pipeline templates are fully customizable using YAMLs to fit your needs, from changing the data sources to the choice of the LLM model, all without touching Pathway’s Python code. Thanks to the Pathway data processing engine,…
- LALLM, a Rust Crate/CLI for CPU Inference of LLMs (LLaMA, GPT-NeoX, etc.)2023 · github.com · ▲45
G'day, HN! I'm one of the maintainers of `llm`. I've been working alongside a trusty group of contributors to bring this project to life, and we're now at a point where we're ready to share it with the world. Large language models (LLMs) are taking the computing world by storm due to their emergent abilities that allow them to perform a wide variety of tasks, including translation, summarization, code generation, and even some degree of reasoning. However, the ecosystem around LLMs is still in its infancy, and it can be difficult to get started with these models. `llm` is a one-stop shop for…
- ATA tool to benchmark LLM APIs (OpenAI, Claude, local/self-hosted)2025 · llmapitest.com · ▲55
I recently built a small open-source tool to benchmark different LLM API endpoints — including OpenAI, Claude, and self-hosted models (like llama.cpp). It runs a configurable number of test requests and reports two key metrics: • First-token latency (ms): How long it takes for the first token to appear • Output speed (tokens/sec): Overall output fluency Demo: https://llmapitest.com/ Code: https://github.com/qjr87/llm-api-test The goal is to provide a simple, visual, and reproducible way to evaluate performance across different LLM providers, including…
- CICan I run this LLM? (locally)2025 · can-i-run-this-llm-blue.vercel.app · ▲42
One of the most frequent questions one faces while running LLMs locally is: I have xx RAM and yy GPU, Can I run zz LLM model ? I have vibe coded a simple application to help you with just that. Update: A lot of great feedback for me to improve the app. Thank you all.
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Hey HN, Henry from Cactus here! We previously released Cactus Needle, a 14MB agentic LLM for tool call, device use, and structured extraction for phones, wearables, smart homes, small robots and microcontrollers. We got really great feedback here, and have now incorporated the suggestions to release Needle 2. The whole model is a single 14MB binary that runs a full session in 28MB of RAM; 45m parameters at 2bit compression. Needle hits 500 tokens/sec decode speed on a Raspberry Pi 5, sits between 400-1,500 tokens/sec on VR devices like Meta Quest 3S and Apple Vision Pro, and ranges…
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Launched alongside, August 2024
the whole month →
- IY
Life & fun · 2024 · ytch.xyz



- IA
Hey there HN! We’re Joe and Stopa, and today we’re open sourcing InstantDB, a client-side database that makes it easy to build real-time and collaborative apps like Notion and Figma. Building modern apps these days involves a lot of schleps. For a basic CRUD app you need to spin up servers, wire up endpoints, integrate auth, add permissions, and then marshal data from the backend to the frontend and back again. If you want to deliver a buttery smooth user experience, you’ll need to add optimistic updates and rollbacks. We do these steps over and over for every feature we build, which can…
Dev tools · 2024 · github.com