[Simone]’s AI assistant, dubbed Max Headbox, is a wakeword-triggered local AI agent capable of following instructions and doing simple tasks. It’s an experiment in many ways, but also a great demonstration not only of what is possible with the kinds of open tools and hardware available to a modern hobbyist, but also a reminder of just how far some of these software tools have come in only a few short years.Max Headbox is not just a local large language model (LLM) running on Pi hardware; the model is able to make tool calls in a loop, chaining them together to complete tasks. This means the system can break down a spoken instruction (for example, “find the weather report for today and email it to me”) into a series of steps to complete, utilizing software tools as needed throughout the process until the task is finished.Watch Max in action in the video (also embedded just below). Max is a little slow, but not unusably so. As far as proofs of concept go, it demonstrates that a foundation for such systems is perfectly feasible on budget hardware running free, locally installed software. Check out the GitHub repository.The name is, of course, a play on Max Headroom, the purportedly computer-generated TV personality of the ’80s who was actually an actor in a mask, just like the person behind what was probably the most famous broadcast TV hack of all time (while wearing a Max Headroom mask).Thanks to [JasonK] for the tip!