# Hob

5 Hacker News commenters recommended Hob and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** A free, on-device AI assistant recommended as a better alternative to big companies' tools. Critics say its models are weak and that it is not fully open source.

## What people warn about

- Not fully open source (2 comments): "they’re closed source and you can’t opt out of analytics" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50250800)) "This doesn't seem to be open source?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50250598))
- Models too weak for real work (2 comments): "there was no way for it to clean up the 18GB of models it installed after I determined it was not really usable for any real work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50253770)) "The models are really dumb, mainly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50255506))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [llama.cpp](https://hackerapproved.com/p/llama-cpp.md): 471 recommend
- [Ollama](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ollama.md): 350 recommend
- [LM Studio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/lm-studio.md): 217 recommend
- [DS4 by antirez](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ds4.md): 109 recommend
- [Unsloth Studio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/unsloth.md): 94 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Hob", https://hackerapproved.com/p/hob/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).