Introducing Pardesi Chat — A collaboration tool with on-device AI assistant
A terminal based lan chat tool with Gemma 3n, Qwen2.5vl and Ollama
The digital age presents a paradox for collaborative learning. While students have unprecedented access to information and communication tools, these platforms are often a digital wilderness of distractions. A simple coding question can lead down a rabbit hole of social media notifications, unrelated videos, and advertisements. For educators and parents, fostering a focused learning environment feels like a constant battle against the very tools meant to help.
This challenge became personal this past couple of weeks as I watched my kids dive into programming. Their questions were brilliant and relentless, but the tools we used for collaboration were not. They needed a space to ask each other questions, to ask me questions, and to interact with AI without the distraction and privacy considerations.
This is what led to the creation of Pardesi Chat.
What is Pardesi Chat?
Pardesi Chat is a terminal-based application designed to be a self-hosting, local-network hub for learning and interaction. It’s built on a simple premise: the first person to launch the app becomes the host, and everyone else on the network can instantly join. There are no cloud servers, no user accounts to manage, and no data ever leaves the local network.
The architecture is intentionally minimalist, relying on Python’s robust standard libraries for networking and threading and it uses Gemma 3n and Qwen2.5vl as on-device AI assistants.
Key features in Pardesi Chat
Real-time LAN Chat: Instantly communicate with other users on your local network.
Automatic Server Discovery: No need to configure IP addresses. The first person to start is the host, everyone else joins automatically.
Private Messaging: Send direct messages to specific users with the /whisper command.
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Integrated Games:
- Hangman: Challenge the room with a word and see who can guess it first!
- Stick Figure Fighter: A turn-based, 1v1 fighting game with standard and special moves, rendered in ASCII art.
On-Device AI Assistant:
- Ask coding, general knowledge, or complex questions.
- Provide a URL to an image and ask the AI to describe or analyze it.
- Provide a URL to a news article or document and ask the AI to summarize it.
Installation and usage
The application is packaged and available on PyPI and can be easily downloaded using pip install pardesichat and then launched as pardesi-chat in the terminal.
The host will have to separately install ollama. Please refer to the github page for further details: https://github.com/arsalanpardesi/pardesichat
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