Hidden Gems –

 

  • LM Studio
    Probably the easiest gateway into running local LLMs on your own machine.

  • AnythingLLM
    Lets you build private AI knowledge bases from your documents.

  • Ollama
    Quietly becoming foundational infrastructure for local AI workflows.

  • Hugging Face Spaces
    One of the best rabbit holes on the internet. Thousands of experimental AI apps.

  • Fal.ai
    Extremely fast inference infrastructure for image and video AI.

  • Leonardo AI
    Surprisingly strong image workflows that many creators still overlook.

  • Black Forest Labs
    The team behind FLUX image models. Serious players.

  • Replicate
    Lets you run open-source AI models through APIs without setup pain.

  • Cursor
    You probably know this one already, but its adoption curve among coders is becoming hard to ignore.

  • SillyTavern
    Oddly named, but technically fascinating. Advanced frontend for LLM experimentation.