main is the stable release branch. All new features land on Rawhide (the rolling development branch) and are promoted here when ready. Nightly cutting-edge builds are available from Rawhide for users who want the latest.
A local-first AI companion for character chat & roleplay — Windows, macOS, and Linux. Runs fully offline with local LLMs (KoboldCpp, oMLX, LM Studio, …), driven by a living Realism Engine (emotion, trust, needs, memory, pockets) with built-in TTS and image generation — and supports remote APIs like OpenRouter, Nano-GPT, and OpenAI with no lock-in when you want them. Open-source (AGPL-3.0). Built as a home for people who lost theirs when Backyard AI killed its desktop app.
🌇 New in 1.7.0 — A Porch to Remember
The porch remembers now — your half-typed line, your cast, your sounds, your settings — and the groups grew up doing it.
- A half-typed message survives. Close the chat or restart the app and the line you never sent is still in the box when you come back.
- Groups, grown up. Members start from their character cards, the seven-step wizard runs in full on the phone, every group gets its own world, and members can be edited in full.
- Mood, on the face. Portraits wear their mood, bond and needs, and the latest reply wears its stamped mood.
- The sky follows the story clock. A sun by day, a moon with its phase by night, and real field recordings with a custom-sound library.
- Generation presets that follow the model, and an Image Studio that keeps every result on a Recent shelf.
- A backup that's really complete — library, settings, portraits and every file you added.
The in-app What's New has all seventeen.
🕯️ Why Does This Exist?
When Backyard's desktop app shut down, people lost the room they sat in at night — not just an installer. Front Porch is the local-first answer: your characters, on your machine, with a license that stays open even if someone hosts a fork.
From v0.9.0 the license is AGPL-3.0 — a modified hosted copy has to publish its changes. Your old Backyard library comes home too: the app imports .byaf archives directly.
That's the promise. A home that stays. Characters that feel like they're there.
🎩 Hat tip to the Backyard AI team for open-sourcing .byaf on their way out. (v0.8.x and earlier are GPLv3.)
🆚 How Does Front Porch AI Compare?
If you're evaluating local AI tools, here's an honest breakdown. Every project on this list is doing something right — the goal isn't to trash competitors, it's to help you pick the right tool for you.
| Feature | Front Porch AI | SillyTavern | Jan.ai | Backyard AI |
|---|
| Native desktop app | ✅ Flutter (Win/Mac/Linux) | ❌ Web-based (local server) | ✅ Electron | ✅ (abandoned) |
| Built-in community character hub | ✅ The Stoop — open-source (AGPL-3.0), local-first; browse / share / download in-app, incl. full group casts (members + lorebooks + realism/needs/pockets) | ❌ (external sites only) | ❌ | ⚠️ Character Hub — closed, paid-SaaS; desktop app killed (2025), web/mobile only; single cards |
| Fully offline — no cloud required | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Remote LLM Endpoints | ✅ Native multi-provider support (OpenRouter, Nano-GPT, custom, etc.) with deep integration | ✅ Strong native support for custom OpenAI-compatible endpoints | ⚠️ Limited | ❌ (service discontinued) |
| Built-in TTS (50+ voices) | ✅ Kokoro + Piper + ElevenLabs + OpenAI | ⚙️ Extension required | ❌ | ❌ |
| Speech-to-text (push-to-talk) | ✅ Whisper, built-in | ⚙️ Extension required | ❌ | ❌ |
| Local image generation | ✅ A1111, Forge, ComfyUI, Draw Things (macOS) | ⚙️ Extension required | ❌ | ❌ |
| Realism Engine | ✅ Time, trust, emotion, needs, chaos, quests, pockets, tastes — each switchable | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Character Expressions | ✅ ONNX + LLM, live avatar swap | ⚙️ Extension required | ❌ | ❌ |
| RAG memory (local) | ✅ ONNX embeddings, no cloud | ⚙️ Extension required | ❌ | ❌ |
| Novel / story generator | ✅ Porch Stories pipeline | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Character card compatibility | ✅ V2 spec + Backyard .byaf import |
SillyTavern's extension ecosystem is genuinely impressive and unmatched for customization depth. If you want maximum flexibility and don't mind configuration work, it's excellent. Front Porch AI prioritises everything working out of the box for users who want to chat, not configure.
✨ Features
🏡 The Stoop — Built-In Community Character Hub
A stoop is where the neighbourhood meets — the front step where people swap stories and pass things back and forth. The Stoop brings that to Front Porch: a community character hub built right into the app, so you can discover and share characters without ever leaving home, while everything else stays offline. What sets it apart from other in-app hubs (Backyard AI's Character Hub, RisuAI's RisuRealm) is that The Stoop hands over entire group casts — not just single character cards — carrying members, lorebooks, and the pre-seeded Realism/Needs/Pockets state intact, so a whole living scene arrives ready to play.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
