For a little over two years have been full time into NLP / NLU (natural language understanding), and have been developing Sophia, a Rust based NLU engine. First actual package is a purpose built Home Assistant edition, because it just fits. Same privacy focused ethos – self hosted, no internet, no big tech, et al.
Designed to fix that pain point in the HA eco-system – you want the fluidity of a LLM, but without the compute and delay. This is meant to solve that. Small Rust based NLU engine about 18MB in size, takes 160MB of RAM, no GPU needed, and simply handles your voice commands including multiple intents.
For example, “it’s dark in here, flick on the lights in the living room and kitchen and turn up the temp to 26” will get translated into the appropriate four intents and processed in mere milliseconds.
Details and demo at: Sophia: Home Assistant Edition - Sophia NLU
Text box on that page, enter your message and it will show what it will map the HA intent to. Make sure to check the FAQ page s it answers many questions people will have.
What I’m looking for are beta testers. Although I’m 100% aligned with the privacy ethos of Ha eco-system, I’m not a HA user myself as I have no need for a smart home. I do however have HA OS installed, plus a Docker install, and others… everything is well tested and should be good to go, I just want some outside eyes on this.
If interested in being a beta tester or simply being notified on the general release, fill out the form on the link above and I’ll be in touch.
Note, this is hand crafted, not vibe coded. I respect both, this industry and you too much to try and shove low quality AI slop down your throat. If interested, AI coding policy which is even more lax than necessary can be found at: AI Coding Policy - Sophia NLU
Having said that, life decided to play a funny prank on me years ago and make me blind. The site is designed by Claude, which I think generally does a good job, but if you see any design issues please let me know. Rest assured, the Rust is me.
It’s been a long two years, I’m excited! Any questions, just let me know.