TinMan is a private, locally hosted AI assistant built for home use. It runs entirely on your own hardware, connects to a set of intelligent tools, and remembers who you are across conversations — all without sending any data to external cloud services.
TinMan holds natural, flowing conversations on almost any topic — answering questions, explaining concepts, helping with decisions, or just chatting. It adapts to the way you communicate and maintains context throughout a session.
When a question requires up-to-date information, TinMan searches the internet in real time and summarises the results. It automatically decides when to search based on the nature of your question — you do not need to ask it to.
Ask for a weather forecast for any city or region and TinMan will retrieve the current conditions and an outlook for the coming days. Example: "What is the weather like in Dublin this week?"
For complex topics, TinMan can run a multi-step research process — gathering information from multiple sources, cross-referencing results, and producing a detailed written summary. Deep research tasks stream their progress live so you can see each stage as it completes.
TinMan can write, explain, and debug code across many languages including Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS, SQL, and more. Code responses are syntax-highlighted and include a one-click copy button. It automatically switches to a coding-optimised model when a coding request is detected.
TinMan remembers you. It stores key facts about your preferences, interests, and past conversations, and recalls relevant context each time you start a new session. The memory system works silently in the background — you never need to remind it who you are.
The News page aggregates headlines from international and European news sources via the NewsAPI service. Articles are scored using sentiment analysis and filtered to surface positive or neutral stories. The feed refreshes automatically and is cached for three hours to respect API limits.
Alongside the news strip, TinMan displays live RSS feeds from sources chosen around the household's interests — currently covering homesteading and self-sufficiency, children's books and education, and animation industry news. Each column shows the three most recent articles with thumbnail images.
Every part of TinMan runs on hardware inside your home network. The AI model runs locally via Ollama, conversation history is stored in a local Qdrant vector database, and authentication is handled by a self-hosted Keycloak server. No conversation text, personal data, or usage information is transmitted to any external service.
TinMan's memory is organised into three layers that work together automatically:
All memory is scoped to your user account and is never shared between users. You can view and delete your memory data from the admin tools.
TinMan's capabilities beyond conversation are delivered through a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server — a local service that exposes tools the AI model can call. The model decides autonomously which tool to use based on your message. Tools include web search, weather lookup, and deep research. The tool list is extensible: new tools can be added to the MCP server without changing TinMan itself.
All AI responses stream token by token to the browser using Server-Sent Events (SSE), so you see the reply as it is generated rather than waiting for it to complete. Long tool calls (such as deep research) stream a live progress indicator showing each stage.
Every response passes through a content guardrail layer before it is shown. Responses that contain blocked language or inappropriate content are intercepted and replaced with a safe alternative. The guardrails are designed to keep the experience suitable for all ages.
Access to the AI Assistant is protected by Keycloak using the OpenID Connect protocol. Only users with a valid account on the local Keycloak server can log in. Sessions are managed securely and logout clears both the TinMan session and the Keycloak single sign-on token.
TinMan is built entirely from open-source components and runs without any cloud subscriptions.
If you have a login, click Login in the menu to sign in with your Keycloak account. Once authenticated, the AI Assistant link will appear in the navigation menu.
You can ask anything in plain language. TinMan will automatically choose the right tool — searching the web, checking the weather, or running a deep research task — without you needing to specify how it should respond.
Visit the News page at any time to browse the latest curated headlines and interest feeds — no login required.