CuriousLM guides

Understand what runs locally and what does not.

Practical, source-backed guidance for choosing, testing, and using private AI on Android and in the browser. No invented benchmarks, fake freshness, or vague privacy slogans.

On-device AI

What Is On-Device AI? A Practical Guide to Private Local AI

On-device AI runs a model on your phone, tablet, or computer instead of sending every prompt to a remote inference service. That changes the privacy, offline, cost, and performance trade-offs, but it does not make every feature automatically private or offline.
8 min read

The local AI guide library

12 independently sourced explainers, checklists, and practical guides.

Offline AI on Android

How to Use AI Without Internet on Android

A practical guide to setting up an Android AI app before going offline, confirming that inference is local, and avoiding surprises when connectivity disappears.
9 min read

Local documents

How to Chat With a PDF Offline on Android

Learn how an on-device AI app extracts a locally saved PDF, retrieves relevant passages, and generates an answer without relying on hosted inference.
10 min read

AI privacy

Does an AI App Send Your Prompts to a Server? How to Check

Airplane mode is useful, but it cannot prove everything about an AI app. Build a feature-by-feature data-flow map, inspect documented recipients, observe requests where practical, and test deletion before entering sensitive content.
10 min read

Offline AI on Android

How to Choose an Offline AI App for Android

A decision framework for choosing an Android AI app that can run a model locally, explain its network boundaries, and remain useful when connectivity disappears.
10 min read

Local AI models

How to Choose a Local AI Model for Android

The best local AI model for Android is not simply the largest download your phone can hold. It is the smallest compatible model that performs your actual tasks reliably while leaving enough memory, storage, and thermal headroom for the operating system and app.
8 min read

Local AI models

LFM2.5 vs Qwen3.5 for Mobile Local AI

LFM2.5 1.2B and Qwen3.5 0.8B are compact model families with different architectures, language claims, licenses, and intended uses. There is no honest universal winner: compare the exact quantised artifacts in the same app, on the same phone, with your own prompts.
8 min read