leon-ai/leon

Project overview

Leon is a modular, open-source personal AI assistant designed to run locally, execute tasks through real tools, and maintain layered context memory. It is currently undergoing a core rebuild, making it better suited for experimentation and development than stable production use.

Project type

AI Agent · Workflow

Use cases

Knowledge Q&A · Automation

Deployment

Refer to project documentation

License

MIT

Best for

• Developers and technical users who need a privacy-aware, locally runnable AI assistant and are comfortable navigating active software transitions.
• Users who require deterministic or step-by-step task execution via real tools and binaries rather than model-only responses.

Key capabilities

• Provides smart (auto-selection), controlled (deterministic native skills), and agent (step-by-step planning) execution modes.
• Supports native skills for controlled actions and agent skills for SKILL.md-backed workflows utilizing real tools, actions, and binaries.
• Maintains durable preferences, day-to-day context, and recent discussion context to keep answers grounded in the user's environment.
• Supports both local and remote AI providers to balance privacy, control, and capability.
• Ships built-in skills and toolkits for search, productivity, system utilities, media workflows, coding assistance, memory-backed interactions, and voice/audio features.

Limitations and risks

• The new documentation for Leon 2.0 is not ready yet, which may impact usability and configuration.
• The core is being rebuilt and elements are frequently moving, which makes contribution harder and introduces instability.

Getting started

• Setup difficulty is medium because it requires manual cloning, dependency installation, Node.js >= 24.0.0, and Python bridges. The first success path involves cloning the repository, installing pnpm globally, running pnpm install, starting the project, and opening http://localhost:5366.

Evidence and sources

• README: Your open-source personal AI assistant.
• README: Leon can run in different ways depending on the task: `smart` mode chooses for you, `controlled` mode follows deterministic native skills and actions, and `agent` mode can plan st…
• README: Leon is designed to stay practical, privacy-aware, and grounded in your real environment. It can operate locally, use dedicated tools instead of relying on free-form guessing, and…
• README: Privacy matters: Leon can work with local models and local context instead of forcing everything through third-party services.
• README: Leon is currently focused on the 2.0 Developer Preview on the develop branch.

Reviewed at: 2026-07-17T13:38:16Z