HT Sherpa · htsherpa.com
I’ll put a private AI on your computer in one sitting.
ChatGPT is someone else’s computer.
A private model is step six. Then, free: launch your own agents. We ask. You answer. We write the plan together.
How it works
The walk — four stages.
1Ask
Who you are and what must never leave.
2Plan
You read it before anything is installed.
3Install
The model lands on your computer. Offline.
4Stay
We stay for the workflows. You keep the keys.
Then, free
Launch your own agents.
We ask you questions. Based on your answers, we write the plan together. By the end you have launched a specialist, and you understand how to use them. Four hours. Each hour ends in a document you keep.
A private model on your computer is the paid walk. This guide is the rest of the ascent, and it does not cost.
Why we exist
The world will not lack AI. It will lack the capacity to use it well.
Founded and supported by global health leaders, technologists, clinicians, and people who care about universal participation, equity, and access to abundant AI — and about translating it into real life.
AI is now abundant and cheap. The capacity to use it well is scarce, and slow to build. That is our work.
“Trust is not given. It emerges over time, when actions are consistent with words.”
Pick your route
Same rules. Different first step.
A dentist and a CFO should not get the same plan. Use the arrows, or click a card — each role has ten uses and what must stay off the model.
Field Guide · Week of 4 September 2026
This week’s top nine that actually fit a computer.
We re-rank every three days from Hugging Face — by country, and by whether it runs on your machine or needs a private server. Not a store. A field guide.
- 1
Gemma 4 26B A4B
A larger brain that only wakes a few billion parameters at a time. The best local model on a 32 GB Mac this week.
- 2
gpt-oss 20B
OpenAI’s first open weights since GPT-2. Built to run in 16 GB. Apache license. Very widely downloaded.
- 3
Qwen 3.6 27B
The best open writer you can still keep on one machine. Multilingual. Apache. The download numbers this week are enormous.
FAQ
Downloading a model is not the work.
We know your profile. We point you at the newest model that fits this machine. Then we stay for the workflows — that is the Sherpa.
- Is it actually private?
- Yes, by design. After the first download, the model runs on your computer. What you type is not sent to us, or to OpenAI, or to Anthropic. There is no server in the middle that could read it.
- Is this just another download button?
- No. Downloading a model is the first mile. The work is knowing which model fits you this month, how to point it at your job, and how to build the workflows after it is on the disk. That is the Sherpa. A dashboard that only fetches weights leaves you at the trailhead.
- How do you pick the newest models?
- Every three days we re-read Hugging Face and re-rank the top nine in each list — by country, and by whether it runs on your computer or needs a private server. The Field Guide is that list, in ordinary language. Then we match one to your machine. A dentist on 16 GB does not get the same checkpoint as a CFO on a private GPU box.
- What happens after it is installed?
- We stay for the part most installers skip: how you use it. Letters, lesson plans, board notes, a local file vault, a first training run on examples you choose. The local guide remains on the machine after we leave. You own the summit.
- Why isn’t this free?
- The model is open source. The walk is the work. We charge our cost plus 20%. That 20% pays the people who accompany you. We do not take more. Gifts and sponsored seats go to the Summit Fund, a 501(c)(3) in formation — not tax-deductible until it can issue a receipt.
What it costs
Cost plus 20%.
- We provide this at cost plus 20%.
- We waive the 20% for students and teachers (.edu). They pay cost only.
A Camp is about $415 at cost, $498 with the 20%.
Gifts open seats in low-resource settings. Summit Fund is a 501(c)(3) in formation. Gifts are not tax-deductible until it can issue a receipt.