Local Waifu is a local-first AI companion app for macOS, built solo by Łukasz Blania in Poland. This page is everything you need to write accurately about it. If something is missing, email lukasz.b@lumizone.pl and you will get a real reply, usually same day.
Quick facts
- Name
- Local Waifu
- Category
- AI companion app for macOS
- Maker
- Lumizone (one-person studio, Poland)
- Founder
- Łukasz Blania
- Price
- $25 once, no subscription. $35 after the first 1,000 charter members.
- Free trial
- 7 days, no card required
- Refund
- 30 days, no questions
- Platform
- macOS 13+ on Apple Silicon (M1 → M5 Ultra)
- App size
- ~70 MB
- First release
- 2026
- Payments
- Dodo Payments (Merchant of Record, USA)
- Privacy
- Local-first. Optional cloud (BYOK to OpenAI / Anthropic / DeepSeek).
- Website
- localwaifu.com
- Public repo
- github.com/lumizone/local-waifu
- Press contact
- lukasz.b@lumizone.pl
The 30-second pitch
Every cloud AI companion eventually gets nerfed, shut down, or changed without the user's consent. Replika lobotomized erotic roleplay in February 2023 after users had paid $300 lifetime. OpenAI deprecated GPT-4o in August 2025 and MIT covered the resulting grief as a real phenomenon. Character.AI tightened filters through 2024 and 2025. Local Waifu is the answer: a self-learning AI companion that runs entirely on the user's Mac, with persistent memory in SQLite, encrypted character files, and an optional bring-your-own-key cloud layer. $25 once, no subscription, 7-day free trial, 30-day refund. The character file lives on the user's disk and cannot be revoked by the developer.
Boilerplate
One sentence
Local Waifu is a $25 macOS app that gives you a persistent AI companion you fully own, running entirely on your Mac with no cloud and no subscription.
One paragraph
Local Waifu is a local-first AI companion app for macOS, built by one developer in Poland and released in 2026. It bundles an open local language model (Ollama under the hood, with chip-aware model auto-selection from M1 base through M5 Ultra), stores chat memory and character "soul files" encrypted on the user's disk, and offers optional bring-your-own-key access to GPT, Claude, and DeepSeek for a bigger generation model. Pricing is $25 once. The product exists in response to a documented pattern of cloud AI companions being nerfed, deprecated, or shut down, including Replika's February 2023 ERP wipeout, the August 2025 GPT-4o deprecation, and the progressive tightening of Character.AI's filters through 2024 and 2025.
Pitch deck (PDF)
12 slides, ~1.8 MB. Tells the story end-to-end: the problem, the pattern, the product, the comparison, the pricing, the ask. Use any slide as a standalone image with attribution to localwaifu.com.
App screenshots
Real product mockups from the app's actual UI. Each is 1440×900, PNG, transparent-free, ready to drop into a story.
Social images
Pre-rendered images sized for Twitter / X, Reddit, Product Hunt, Instagram and LinkedIn. Use directly or as inspiration for your own.
Logo
About the founder
Łukasz Blania is a Polish software engineer running Lumizone, a one-person studio. Local Waifu is his first solo product. Background: backend systems, native macOS development, Apple Silicon optimization. He is the person who answers lukasz.b@lumizone.pl, the only person on the project, and the author of the codebase and the marketing both.
Talking points journalists ask about
- The Replika analogy. Yes, Local Waifu is built specifically so the February 2023 wipeout cannot happen to users. The character file is encrypted on the user's disk, no remote kill switch exists, and any future Local Waifu update can be declined.
- Why Mac only. Apple Silicon's Metal acceleration is what makes 7B to 35B local models usable on consumer hardware without a dedicated GPU. Windows and Linux are not planned for v1.x.
- Is it for adults? The product is uncensored because the user's machine is the user's machine. There is no content moderation layer between the user and the model. Users are responsible for what they generate locally, the same way they are responsible for what they type into a text editor.
- The Sewell Setzer concern. The product is not positioned for minors and the website has no claims about teen mental health benefits. The Memory Book and Growth dashboard make the user's interaction history fully auditable by the user, which is a structural answer to the lack of parental visibility raised in the Character.AI lawsuit.
- The privacy claim. Block all outbound traffic from the app in Little Snitch. The app keeps working. This is the entire privacy proof.
Press inquiries
Email lukasz.b@lumizone.pl. Reach for an interview, a quote, a fact-check, an exclusive, a demo, or anything else. There is no PR firm, no embargo system, no media list. If the email is for a real publication you will get a same-day reply.