On-device companion: what works, and the NPU wall

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 16:00:00 +0200

A logbook entry, not a launch. I’ve been chasing a small, stubborn idea: a companion whose whole mind fits on the phone — no cloud, no round-trip, nothing to phone home to.

Most “AI on your phone” is really AI in a datacenter with a phone-shaped window onto it. I wanted the opposite: the model itself on the device, running locally in your hand — a compact language-and-vision model that works where you are, even in airplane mode.

Mediatek on Jasutin.site

On-device companion: what works, and the NPU wall