How HN: Billy – a self-hosted AI assistant that lives in your Telegram (github.com)

Billy is a self-hosted AI assistant designed to operate within Telegram, offering users both local and cloud capabilities. By leveraging Anthropic's Claude as its primary "brain," Billy can perform tasks such as reading and writing emails, managing a lightweight CRM, conducting web research, and generating documents or images, all while adapting and learning reusable skills over time. The assistant functions as an orchestrator, dispatching specialized sub-agents on demand to maintain efficiency and minimize costs, ensuring each interaction remains swift and actionable. This innovative tool is significant for the AI and ML community as it demonstrates a user-friendly approach to integrating multiple AI models within a single interface, addressing both personal privacy and functionality. Built on Python and LangGraph, Billy runs as a single-user application, emphasizing security by ensuring it responds to just one designated Telegram account. Users also have the flexibility to manage their AI's settings and capabilities through a structured configuration file, merging cloud and local processing effectively. This initiative highlights a trend toward personalized AI solutions that allow for greater user control and reduced dependence on third-party services.