BootstrapAI

A lightweight, CPU-only AI assistant to help novice users download and configure a small fast local AI on their system. This is designed as a helper app to be included with other apps to guide users through possibly complex situations it has limited tooling

BootstrapAI provides a simple terminal interface that guides users through:

• Downloading small, CPU-friendly AI models
• Configuring the inference engine
• Chatting with the local model — no cloud, no GPU required

Architecture

┌──────────────┐     ┌──────────────────┐     ┌───────────────┐
│  ConsoleUI   │────▶│  Application     │────▶│  IInference   │
│  (CLI menu)  │     │  (orchestrator)  │     │  Engine (IF)  │
└──────────────┘     └──────────────────┘     └───────┬───────┘
       │                      │                       │
       ▼                      ▼                       ▼
┌──────────────┐     ┌──────────────────┐     ┌───────────────┐
│ DownloadMgmt │     │  ConfigManager   │     │  LiggufEngine │
│  (libcurl)   │     │  (JSON on disk)  │     │  (CPU-only)   │
└──────────────┘     └──────────────────┘     └───────────────┘

The inference engine is behind the IInferenceEngine interface so it can be swapped out easily — BootstrapAI is not tied to ligguf forever.

Dependencies

• C++17 compiler (GCC 9+, Clang 10+)
• CMake ≥ 3.16
• libcurl (for model downloads)
• nlohmann/json (header-only, for config)
• Google Test (for unit tests, optional)

Build

# Configure
cmake -B build

# Build
cmake --build build

# Run
./build/BootstrapAI

Run tests

cmake --build build && cd build && ctest

Project Status

Early development. See project.ai for the task list.