Hello!

As a handsome local AI enjoyer™ you’ve probably noticed one of the big flaws with LLMs:

It lies. Confidently. ALL THE TIME.

(Technically, it “bullshits” - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5

I’m autistic and extremely allergic to vibes-based tooling, so … I built a thing. Maybe it’s useful to you too.

The thing: llama-conductor

llama-conductor is a router that sits between your frontend (OWUI / SillyTavern / LibreChat / etc) and your backend (llama.cpp + llama-swap, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint). Local-first (because fuck big AI), but it should talk to anything OpenAI-compatible if you point it there (note: experimental so YMMV).

Not a model, not a UI, not magic voodoo.

A glass-box that makes the stack behave like a deterministic system, instead of a drunk telling a story about the fish that got away.

TL;DR: “In God we trust. All others must bring data.”

Three examples:

1) KB mechanics that don’t suck (1990s engineering: markdown, JSON, checksums)

You keep “knowledge” as dumb folders on disk. Drop docs (.txt, .md, .pdf) in them. Then:

  • >>attach <kb> — attaches a KB folder
  • >>summ new — generates SUMM_*.md files with SHA-256 provenance baked in
  • `>> moves the original to a sub-folder

Now, when you ask something like:

“yo, what did the Commodore C64 retail for in 1982?”

…it answers from the attached KBs only. If the fact isn’t there, it tells you - explicitly - instead of winging it. Eg:

The provided facts state the Commodore 64 launched at $595 and was reduced to $250, but do not specify a 1982 retail price. The Amiga’s pricing and timeline are also not detailed in the given facts.

Missing information includes the exact 1982 retail price for Commodore’s product line and which specific model(s) were sold then. The answer assumes the C64 is the intended product but cannot confirm this from the facts.

Confidence: medium | Source: Mixed

No vibes. No “well probably…”. Just: here’s what’s in your docs, here’s what’s missing, don’t GIGO yourself into stupid.

And when you’re happy with your summaries, you can:

  • >>move to vault — promote those SUMMs into Qdrant for the heavy mode.

2) Mentats: proof-or-refusal mode (Vault-only)

Mentats is the “deep think” pipeline against your curated sources. It’s enforced isolation:

  • no chat history
  • no filesystem KBs
  • no Vodka
  • Vault-only grounding (Qdrant)

It runs triple-pass (thinker → critic → thinker). It’s slow on purpose. You can audit it. And if the Vault has nothing relevant? It refuses and tells you to go pound sand:

FINAL_ANSWER:
The provided facts do not contain information about the Acorn computer or its 1995 sale price.

Sources: Vault
FACTS_USED: NONE
[ZARDOZ HATH SPOKEN]

Also yes, it writes a mentats_debug.log, because of course it does. Go look at it any time you want.

The flow is basically: Attach KBs → SUMM → Move to Vault → Mentats. No mystery meat. No “trust me bro, embeddings.”

3) Vodka: deterministic memory on a potato budget

Local LLMs have two classic problems: goldfish memory + context bloat that murders your VRAM.

Vodka fixes both without extra model compute. (Yes, I used the power of JSON files to hack the planet instead of buying more VRAM from NVIDIA).

  • !! stores facts verbatim (JSON on disk)
  • ?? recalls them verbatim (TTL + touch limits so memory doesn’t become landfill)
  • CTC (Cut The Crap) hard-caps context (last N messages + char cap) so you don’t get VRAM spikes after 400 messages

So instead of:

“Remember my server is 203.0.113.42” → “Got it!” → [100 msgs later] → “127.0.0.1 🥰”

you get:

!! my server is 203.0.113.42 ?? server ip203.0.113.42 (with TTL/touch metadata)

And because context stays bounded: stable KV cache, stable speed, your potato PC stops crying.


There’s more (a lot more) in the README, but I’ve already over-autism’ed this post.

TL;DR:

If you want your local LLM to shut up when it doesn’t know and show receipts when it does, come poke it:

PS: Sorry about the AI slop image. I can’t draw for shit.

PPS: A human with ASD wrote this using Notepad++. If it the formatting is weird, now you know why.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 hours ago

    Oh I entirely believe you.

    Hell hath no wrath like an annoyed high functioning autist.

    I’ve … had my own 6 month black out periods where I came up with something extremely comprehensive and ‘neat’ before.

    Seriously, bootstrapping all this is incredibly impressive.

    I would… hope that you can find collaborators, to keep this thing alive in the event you get into a car accident (metaphorical or literal), or, you know, are completely burnt out after this.

    … but yeah, it is… yet another immensely ironic aspect of being autistic that we’ve been treated and maligned as robots our whole lives, and then when the normies think they’ve actually built the AI from sci fi, no, turns out its basically extremely talented at making up bullshit and fudging the details and being a hypocrite, which… appalls the normies when they have to look into a hyperpowered mirror of themselves.

    And then, of course, to actually fix this, its some random autist no one has ever heard of (apologies if you are famous and i am unaware of this), who is putting in an enormous of effort, that… most likely, will not be widely recognized.

    … fucking normies man.

    • SuspciousCarrot78@lemmy.worldOP
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      6 hours ago

      Not famous, no :)

      I hear you, brother. Normally, my hyperfocus is BJJ (I’ve been at that for 25 years; it’s a sickness). I herniated a disc in my low back and lost the ability to exercise for going on 6 months.

      BJJ is like catnip for autists. There is an overwhelming population of IT, engineers and ASD coded people in BJJ world.

      There’s even a gent we loving call Blinky McHeelhook, because well…see for yourself

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mRsqvRduHY

      Noticing the effects of elbow position, creating an entire algorithm, flow chart and epistemology off the fact?

      “VERY NORMAL.”

      Anyway, when my body said “sit down”, my brain went “ok, watch this”.

      I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. No one taught me how to drive this thing :)

      PS: I only found out after my eldest was diagnosed. Then my youngest. The my MIL said “go get tested”. I did.

      Result - ASD.

      Her response - “We know”.

      Great - thanks for telling me. Would have been useful to know, say… 40ish years ago.