Oh sorry, I missed that bit.

I got Codex + GPT-5 to modify that Llama chat example to implement the "load from local directory" pattern. It appears to work.

First you'll need to grab the checkout of the local model (~1.3GB):

  git lfs install
  git clone https://huggingface.co/onnx-community/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct-q4f16

Now click "Browse folder" and select the folder you just checked out with Git.

Click the confusing "Upload" confirmation (it doesn't upload anything, just opens those files in the current browser session).

Now click "Load local model" - and you should get a full working chat interface.

Code is here: https://github.com/simonw/transformers.js-examples/commit/cd...

Here's the full Codex session that I used to build this: https://gist.github.com/simonw/3c46c9e609f6ee77367a760b5ca01...

I ran Codex against the https://github.com/huggingface/transformers.js-examples/tree... folder and prompted:

> Modify this application such that it offers the user a file browse button for selecting their own local copy of the model file instead of loading it over the network. Provide a "download model" option too.

Then later:

> Build the production app and then make it available on localhost somehow

And:

> Uncaught (in promise) Error: Invalid configuration detected: both local and remote models are disabled. Fix by setting `env.allowLocalModels` or `env.allowRemoteModels` to `true`.

And:

> Add a bash script which will build the application such that I can upload a folder called llama-3.2-webgpu to http://static.simonwillison.net/static/2025/llama-3.2-webgpu... and http://static.simonwillison.net/static/2025/llama-3.2-webgpu... will serve the app

(Note that this doesn't allow you to use any model on your machine, but it proves that it's possible.)

This should be what you're looking for. It doesn't utilize the GPU, but WebGL support is in the TODOs.

https://github.com/ngxson/wllama

https://huggingface.co/spaces/ngxson/wllama

Firefox Nightly on macOS now supports WebGPU, and the documentation says the Linux build supports it too.

Neither of requirements are true on recent OS versions. Users have had the ability to make containers or VMs without special privileges for a very long time now.

I think what you want is this: https://github.com/mlc-ai/web-llm

It's both what you want and not; the chat/question interface is as you describe, lack-of-installation is not. The LLM work is offloaded to other software, not the browser.

I would like to skip maintaining all this crap, though: I like your approach

You should install it, because it's exactly what you just described.

Edit: From a UI perspective, it's exactly what you described. There's a dropdown where you select the LLM, and there's a ChatGPT-style chatbox. You just docker-up and go to town.

Maybe I don't understand the rest of the request, but I can't imagine a software where a webpage exists and it just magically has LLMs available in the browser with no installation?