Sidekick - Your Local AI Desktop Companion

Sidekick is an intelligent conversational assistant for your desktop, powered by local AI through Ollama. It provides a seamless desktop experience for interacting with various AI models while keeping all your data private and secure on your local machine.

Key Features

• 🖥️ Standalone desktop application with an intuitive user interface built with Custom Tkinter
• 🚀 Fast responses with local AI processing
• 🔒 Complete privacy - all processing happens on your machine
• 💾 Conversation history stored in local SQLite database
• 🪶 Lightweight and efficient performance
• 🌐 Cross-platform support for Windows, Mac and Linux

Prerequisites

Before installing Sidekick, you need to set up Ollama on your system:

1. Install Ollama from ollama.com
2. You can install AI models in two ways:
   • Through the UI: Open Sidekick's settings (⚙️) and use the "Install New Model" section. Enter the model name (e.g., phi:latest) and click "Install Model". Please be patient during the download as models can be quite large (several gigabytes).
   • Through the command line:

     ollama pull deepseek-r1:latest
     # or
     ollama pull phi:latest

Installation

Sidekick now provides automated installation scripts that will set up everything you need, including Ollama and a default AI model. Choose the appropriate method for your operating system:

Windows

1. Open PowerShell as Administrator
2. Navigate to the project directory
3. Run:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope Process; .\install.ps1

Linux/MacOS

1. Open Terminal
2. Navigate to the project directory
3. Run:

chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh

The installation script will:

• Install Ollama if not already installed
• Download and set up a small Llama2 model
• Create a Python virtual environment
• Install all required dependencies
• Build the executable using PyInstaller

After installation completes, you'll find the Sidekick executable in the dist folder.

Manual Installation

If you prefer to install components manually, follow these steps:

Sidekick requires Python 3.10 or higher. We recommend creating a virtual environment:

python -m venv venv
# On Windows
.\venv\Scripts\activate
# On Mac/Linux
source venv/bin/activate

Install the requirements:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Configuration

Create a .env file in the project root:

OLLAMA_HOST="http://localhost:11434"
AI_MODEL="deepseek-r1:latest"  # or your preferred model

Running Sidekick

Start the application:

python main.py

Building from Source

To create a standalone executable:

pyinstaller --onefile --windowed --icon="src/images/sidekick.ico" --noconsole --hidden-import=tkinter --name="Sidekick" --add-data="src/images:images" src/main.py

The executable will be created in the dist directory.

How It Works

Sidekick provides a text-based conversational interface using Ollama's local AI models. All processing happens on your machine, ensuring privacy and quick response times. The application stores conversation history in a local SQLite database, allowing for context-aware interactions while maintaining data privacy.

Troubleshooting

1. Ensure Ollama is running in the background
2. Verify your model is properly installed using ollama list
3. Check the Ollama host URL in your .env file
4. Make sure your system meets the minimum requirements for your chosen model

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the BSD 3-Clause License - see the LICENSE file for details.