--- title: "Winston PI - Your Private Personal Intelligence System" description: "Winston is a standalone Personal Intelligence system that runs entirely on your own hardware. Absolute privacy, a local digital butler, and hyper-personalization, no data mining, no subscription lock-in." image: https://jvvdesign.com/images/placeholder-media.svg url: https://jvvdesign.com/winston --- # Winston PI - Your Private Personal Intelligence System ### Winston - https://jvvdesign.com/winston Winston PI - Your Private Personal Intelligence System: Winston is a standalone Personal Intelligence system that runs entirely on your own hardware. Absolute privacy, a local digital butler, and hyper-personalization, no data mining, no subscription lock-in. · last updated 2026-10-07 **Private Personal Intelligence** - "Introucing Winston" A personal intelligence shell built for local edge computing. Now in alpha release. (Learn more → #contact; Sign up for the Alpha → #alpha) **The Paradigm Shift** - "Take matters in your own hand": For over a good decade we traded privacy and peace-of-mind for convenience in the cloud. Whilst the effects of sharing your personal data and large corporations fighting for power over your data. Winston is built against this trend. With Winston your data is yours, and with modern, always more capable edge hardware, your own machine can suddenly be smarter than the cloud. It just lacked a smart system to run on it, untill now... **The Three Pillars** - "What makes Winston unique" Winston is built around the concept around local autonomy and data sovereignty, meaning that it is build with the sole purpose to run entirely on your own hardware: so no subscription lock-in or corporate eyes over your shoulder. To achieve this, Winston is built on three pillars that make it a unique complete agentic 'shell'. 1. Your data, your rules. - Your data never leaves your hardware unless you explicitly want it to. You are the owner of your data, and you can export or delete it at any time. 2. A complete suite that is truly yours. - Winston comes with a full suite of known software tools, software and AI models, all these are tighly integrated with winston and expendable when needed. 3. Built to assist your life. - Cloud AIs know everything about the general world, but nothing about you. Winston doesn't need to be the smartest AI on the planet; he needs to be the best at assisting your life. **Introducing PCL** - "How Winston can understand your world" Just like a good friend, Winston needs time to understand you in the many facets of your life. However most local AIs don't have this capability, they also lack the ability to learn from your interactions due to the nature of their pre-trained weights and models. For this I invented a unique context system called: PCL (Personal Context Levels). Two axes decide the order: - Context integrations - With every interaction winston maps engagement and places it in a timeline. · Daily: average heartbeat, steps, who is home, appointments, your chats and daily mood · Weekly: sleep, strain, stress: developing habits it sees · Month: weight, VO2max, what you ate · Semi-year: who lives here, your routines, the settings you chose - Engagement evaluation - With every interaction you make, winston evaluates the relevance of each data point it has. · You used it: opened it, acted on it, or asked about it by name · You said so: a thumb up or down on the card itself · You only saw it: counts for nothing on its own · It got old: changes nothing here, time is defined before - Level 1 - Personal (40% of the brief): your own model, your body, the subjects you keep coming back to - Level 2 - Close second (25% of the brief): the weekly ones: the energy tariff, the family calendar, habits that stuck - Level 3 - Useful (15% of the brief): what you ask about now and then, plus the state of the house - Level 4 - Background fluff (10% of the brief): sensor noise worth having that can tell us something, e.g. the weather - Level 5 - Not relevant but kept (10% of the brief): data points that are not currently relevant but are kept for potential patterns - Observation: When you engage with winston it observes your connected world and keeps on eye on the things you care about. - Pin, mute, vote or correct: Pinned data is fixed and winston embraces it. Muted data stays out of winston's context, data you vote on or correct is used to improve winston's understanding of your world. - Safety is built in: Winston has strict safety rules built in, and will never find patterns that are harmfull for you and your surrounding **Under the Hood** - "Technical transparency by design" - Complete Transparency: Winston is human oriented software with complete transparency, that means you own all code and your data, but some core parts of winston cannot be modified for this reason. - Open-Source Foundations: Built on verifiable open source libraries like Ollama, Qdrant, Flask, Home Assistant and more. These libraries are the building blocks of Winston, and you can inspect them all to verify their behavior. - Direct Feedback Loop: Winston is built to be a companion, not a product. You can reach me directly to report issues, request features, and provide feedback on your experience. - Built to Compound: Local edge AI hardware and models grows more capable and efficient every year. Your data can migrate, your hardware can be upgraded, and your Winston can evolve over time. **Alpha signup** - "Join the Founder's Alpha edition" Winston will ship from today as a limited edition Founder's Alpha, strictly within the Netherlands. I am looking for active users that love to build, test and refine digital sovereignty. Price: Lifelong license - €100 (incl. Dutch VAT · one-time purchase) Included: Your own Winston instance on your hardware; Ongoing software updates*; Become a part winston's development and feedback loop - Start your switch to digital sovereignty: Winston runs natively on Linux, it contains a full suite of software tools and open source AI models, and it is built to run entirely on your own hardware. This means that you can take back control of your data, and start your switch to digital sovereignty. - Up to 5 local users: Winston is now only tested for max 5 people (on larger systems). If you want to run Winston for more than 5 people, please let me know. - Multi-modal access: Winston can run various multimodal local AI models using it's resource management system. Depending on your hardware, you can run multiple models at the same time with multiple users on limited hardware. Availability: Founder's Alpha is currently available strictly within the Netherlands. **FAQ** - "Frequently asked questions" Q: Do I need a cloud subscription to run Winston? A: No. Winston is a one-time software purchase. The software, the models and your data run on your own machine. Nothing sits in somebody else's data centre, and nothing stops working, unless you try to break it's compliant systems. Q: What does the Founder's Alpha cost, and where is it available? A: A lifelong license is €100 including Dutch VAT. Winston ships as a limited edition strictly within the Netherlands, and the Alpha includes your own instance on your hardware, ongoing software updates* and a place in Winston's development and feedback loop. Q: What hardware do I need to run Winston? A: Winston runs natively on Linux Ubuntu within a dedicated Python environment. A host with 24GB+ (V)RAM, 1TB SSD is the advised minimum. Q: How many people can live with one Winston? A: Up to 5 local users have been tested. If you want to run Winston for more than 5 people, please let me know. Q: Can I access Winston when I am away from home? A: Yes. I use Cloudflared tunnels for allowing winston to be on the internet. However keep in mind that such systems always have a risk of being compromised. Winston has a built-in security watchdog, but the more you expose it to the internet, the more risk you take. Q: What does Winston learn about me - and can I control it? A: Winston organizes your world into five Personal Context Levels. Scoring how relevant every data point is. The more you use it, the more accurate he becomes. Q: Who owns the data Winston keeps? A: You do. Your data never leaves your hardware unless you explicitly want it to, and it is yours to export or erase in full at any time. If you want to share it with me, you can do so by exporting it and sending it to me. I will never have access to your data unless you explicitly give it to me. Q: If I give winston access to my data, is it safe? A: Yes, but keep in mind that any system will always have a risk of being compromised. Winston has a built-in security watchdog, but what you do with your data is your responsibility. Q: What is Winston built on, and can I inspect it? A: Verifiable open-source foundations: Ollama, Qdrant, Flask, Home Assistant and more are his building blocks. Feel free to contact me for a full list of libraries and their licenses, and you can inspect them all to verify their behavior. Q: Will Winston get better over time? A: That is the whole idea! Edge AI hardware and local models grow more capable every year, your data can migrate, your hardware can be upgraded, and its understanding of you only deepens with the history he keeps. **Get in touch** - "Curious what Winston would take off your plate?" You can talk to me using my AI assistant Winston. Together with you he'll refine your query and send you a summary of it once finalized. The contact block is a live chat ("Ask me a question") with Winston PI. The composer opens as an email field ("Your email…") behind a live arrow; a valid address grows the panel into the thread, centres the ask ("How can I help you?") in it and turns the same field into a message box that rises with what is typed. This chat is handled by Winston, my AI assistant, and may produce information that is not factual. Thread state: Once filed: This thread is closed - your enquiry is filed. I'll follow up personally. Thank you! Validation: That does not look like an email address yet. By confirming, you consent to the processing of your personal information in accordance to the Privacy Policy. 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I will never have access to your data unless you explicitly give it to me." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "If I give winston access to my data, is it safe?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Yes, but keep in mind that any system will always have a risk of being compromised. Winston has a built-in security watchdog, but what you do with your data is your responsibility." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "What is Winston built on, and can I inspect it?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Verifiable open-source foundations: Ollama, Qdrant, Flask, Home Assistant and more are his building blocks. Feel free to contact me for a full list of libraries and their licenses, and you can inspect them all to verify their behavior." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "Will Winston get better over time?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "That is the whole idea! Edge AI hardware and local models grow more capable every year, your data can migrate, your hardware can be upgraded, and its understanding of you only deepens with the history he keeps." } } ] } ] } ```