About Leon
Leon is an open-source personal assistant in TypeScript, Node.js and Python. The current direction is an agentic assistant built around tools, context, memory and task execution, one meant to remain practical and rooted in your actual setup. It can run on your own machine and prefers dedicated tools to free-form guessing, completing tasks from start to finish with deterministic workflows where possible.
The README carries an important notice: current work centers on a 2.0 developer preview in the develop branch, the new documentation is unfinished, and the existing docs site mostly describes the older architecture. People who want the older, more stable pre-agentic version should use the master branch, and the architecture and context files in the core folder are the most accurate references for the current design. Topics also reference speech-to-text and text-to-speech.
Leon is MIT licensed and self-run. It appeals to tinkerers and developers who want a hackable assistant they control rather than a cloud service, with the caveat that the new core is under active change.
Key features
- Tool-using personal assistant
- Memory and context awareness
- Local operation with a privacy focus
- Speech recognition and synthesis topics
- Legacy stable branch available
- 2.0 developer preview on develop branch
Good fit for
- →A hackable personal assistant on your own machine
- →Exploring agentic assistant design
- →Voice-driven task automation experiments
- Tags
- personal-assistant
- ai
- voice-assistant
- agentic
- nodejs
- python
- privacy
- self-hosted
- open-source
Leon: questions and answers
- What is Leon used for?
- Leon is an open-source personal AI assistant built around tools, memory and agentic execution, designed to run locally and stay privacy-aware; version 2.0 is in developer preview. It is a good fit for a hackable personal assistant on your own machine, exploring agentic assistant design and voice-driven task automation experiments.
- Is Leon open source?
- Yes. Leon is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at leon-ai/leon and is written mainly in TypeScript.
- Is Leon free?
- Yes. Leon is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
- Can I self-host Leon?
- Yes. Leon can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
- What are some alternatives to Leon?
- Similar open-source tools in the AI Tools category include OpenClaw, SurfSense and Open Notebook. SaaS products in the same category include BlazingFastTranscription, Chat Analyzer and 628 VC.
- Is Leon actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to Leon was on 1 October 2026. The project has 18k stars on GitHub.
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