Frequently asked questions

PHNTM One is a private AI assistant appliance: a small desk device with a 10.1″ touchscreen that runs its AI model on its own hardware instead of in the cloud. It chats, remembers what you tell it, sets reminders, answers questions about your own documents, and talks — with the internet unplugged. It costs $799 once, with no account and no subscription. What is a private AI appliance? →

Yes, for a specific kind of person. It does the everyday assistant jobs — memory, reminders, drafting, questions about your documents, voice — in Private mode without sending anything to a data center, which neither ChatGPT nor Alexa can do. It is not as smart or as fast as a frontier cloud model. Home Assistant control on your own network rather than a vendor's cloud is planned for 1.0 and is not yet release-verified. The compare page has both tables: the rows we win and the rows we lose.

If you're technical and already own strong hardware, you should — it's free, and a good GPU will outrun a Raspberry Pi. PHNTM One is for people who want the finished thing rather than the project: memory, reminders, document search, voice, a touchscreen and phone chat already integrated, always on, on a dedicated box that isn't your work computer.

PHNTM One is designed, assembled and tested by Jacob DeCamp, a one-person hardware operation in the United States. It is sold only at phntmcore.com. It is not affiliated with other companies or products that use the name “PHNTM”. Meet the builder →

It talks and listens, remembers you, handles reminders, timers, alarms and lists, reads your documents, photos and scans and cites the page, answers factual questions from an offline library, includes planned 1.0 lights and thermostat control through Home Assistant (not yet release-verified), gives you a phone app with no app store, and looks after itself. The features page lists all of it in one place.

Planned PHNTM One 1.0 capability, not yet release-verified. The intended integration uses the Home Assistant you already run to control the lights, plugs, scenes and thermostats you allow over your local network, with a token that stays on the device; locks and garage doors wait for a tap on the screen. No vendor cloud and no new account. It is the voice and the screen, not the hub, so you need Home Assistant. How it works.

Yes. An offline library of Wikipedia and reference packs is stored on the device. Ask a factual question and it answers from the library, with the article it came from, even with the router unplugged. It won't know today's news or the weather, because those need the internet.

Yes. Named kitchen timers (several at once, each counting down on the screen with a chime), wake alarms, reminders, shopping and to-do lists and notes are built in; the lists and tools run as small sandboxed skills. Skills & timers.

Yes. Send a photo of a receipt, a letter or a whiteboard, or a scanned PDF, and it reads the text on the device and files it with your documents; answers cite the photo they came from. It reads the words in a picture; it doesn't describe what's in a photo.

It replies, listens and speaks in ten languages: English, Español, Français, Deutsch, Italiano, Português, Nederlands, Polski, 日本語 and 中文. You choose during setup and can change it any time.

You're always the one who says yes. When you bring it a signed update, the Update Center on the screen shows what's in it and you tap Install. It checks the signature and every file before anything changes, runs a self-test after, and rolls back on its own if the test fails. Nothing polls for updates or updates in the background, and an older or replayed release is refused.

Yes, within limits it tells you about. A supervisor checks the device every 90 seconds, and fifteen specific repairs can run on their own, each with a hard limit; the seven that touch files or indexes undo themselves if they didn't work. It tells a cause from a symptom, sends you a weekly report, and any improvement to itself waits for your approval. The full list.

Yes. The assistant — the model, your memories, the chat — runs entirely on the device. Unplug your router and it keeps working. You only need a connection for extras you choose: Boosted mode with your own key, or the optional Telegram and email connections. Updates come as a file you put on the device yourself. The clock sets itself over the internet, so after a power cut with no connection the time can be unknown until it's back.

No. In Private mode (the default), nothing you say or type leaves the device — not to us, not to any third party. There is no telemetry, no analytics on the device, and no account. The optional Boosted and Autonomous modes are the exceptions (plus Telegram or email, if you connect them). Both are off by default and use your own key, and every Boosted answer is labelled. See exactly what stays local →

Gemma 3 4B — Google's open-weights model, quantized (Q4_K_M) to fit the Raspberry Pi 5 — plus a local embedding model for memory and document search, both running on the device's own hardware. The device always shows you which brain answered. An honest framing: a small local model is genuinely useful, not a frontier model — that's exactly the trade the product makes for total privacy, and if you want more power for a hard task, Boosted mode uses your own API key.

No. You buy the device once and Private mode is free forever — there's nothing for us to bill because nothing runs on our servers. If you enable Boosted mode, you pay Anthropic directly, on your own key, for what you use; none of that goes through us.

Your device keeps working, full stop. It doesn't depend on our servers for anything — not for answers, not for login, not for staying alive. It's a Linux computer you own, SSH access is documented, and your data is on your hardware in your house. This question is exactly why the product is built this way.

Yes. It runs Debian Linux, SSH is available and documented, and we will never remove it. You never need a terminal — setup happens on the touchscreen — but the machine is yours, and we mean that literally.

Scan the code on the device's screen and a private chat opens on your phone, served directly from the device over your network — no app store, no account, no cloud relay in between. Your phone is talking to the box on your desk, not to a server somewhere.

Yes — both ways. Press the mic button, ask out loud, and it answers through the built-in speaker. It's push-to-talk on purpose: the included USB microphone is never live unless you press it — a companion with a voice, not a far-field microphone listening to your living room. You can also type on the touchscreen, the included mini keyboard, or from your phone. For longer thoughts there's dictation (up to five minutes, red dot on the whole time), and it can read your documents and notes back to you.

Fast enough for a desk assistant, and honest about the trade. The local model writes about two words a second, so a short answer usually takes tens of seconds and a long one can run past a minute; the first word usually arrives within a few seconds. Questions about the device itself come back almost instantly. The one slow moment is the first answer after the box has been idle for a while, which is slower, once, while the model reloads into memory (an idle box releases the RAM on purpose). After that it's back to its usual pace. This is the cost of running a real model on your own hardware instead of a data center — and it is why Boosted mode exists for the rare hard task.

Raspberry Pi 5 with 8 GB RAM, a 10.1″ 1920×1200 touchscreen (5-point touch), speaker, active cooling, and 256 GB microSD storage; NVMe is a tinkering upgrade path, not an order option — in an enclosed case. Full details on the specs page.

PHNTM One is built to order in small batches. Right now reservations are open and batch 1 ships after final on-device release testing. Reserving is free: nothing is charged, and you get one email when ordering opens. Once you order, it ships within 7–10 business days after payment, with a tracking number to your email the day it leaves. Every unit is assembled, burned in for at least 24 hours, and tested before it ships. Free shipping in the US; shipping & returns has the rest.

$799: one price, once, no required subscription for local use, and the voice bundle (USB microphone + mini wireless keyboard) is in the box. Ordering is paused while the 1.0 software is certified; you can reserve one now for free, with no card and no deposit, and you'll be offered your unit in the order reservations arrived. Questions first? Email me directly.