NikOSAbout
Nik Reljin
NikOS is one project out of a set that mostly points the same direction: software that runs on your own machine, does one job well, and can be read start to finish.
What I work on
Five threads run through most of it.
Local-first AI
Inference that runs on hardware you own, without a request leaving the machine. Model compression and finetuning so smaller hardware stays viable.
Developer infrastructure
Reusable CI, shared shell libraries and repo tooling — the parts that get copy-pasted between projects until someone factors them out.
Security tooling
Finding credentials before they ship, and removing them from history once they have. Scanners that produce evidence rather than adjectives.
Hardware that does something
E-paper companions, Android display nodes, second lives for a Raspberry Pi or an old Kinect. Small devices with a clear job.
Terminal-first interfaces
TUIs and CLIs for work that does not need a browser: markdown reading, image preview, repository dashboards.
Things I've been building
All of these are public on GitHub. Several have their own documentation sites.
AI and local inference
NikOS
This project. An Ansible playbook that turns Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04 or 26.04 into a local-first AI development workstation.
local-ai-lab
A hands-on course for building local, private AI from scratch — RAG, MCP, LangChain and LangGraph, in Python, Node.js and C#. No Docker required.
shrink-llm
An end-to-end toolkit for compressing large models and deploying them on phones — quantization, pruning and knowledge distillation.
finetorch
A Rust-native LLM finetuning toolkit: LoRA and QLoRA, dataset preparation, training orchestration and evaluation on a single GPU.
Security
Leak Lock
A VS Code extension that finds secrets in git history, verifies whether the credentials are still live, and rewrites them out of every branch and tag — with a script you can read before running it.
claude-reposec
Deep-scans a repository for secrets, PII, code vulnerabilities, history leaks and dependency CVEs.
Secrets are redacted in all output; --ci fails the build on high findings.
credential-lens
Safely inspects SSH key files and compact JWTs, producing evidence-based facts for security-review tooling rather than guesses.
Developer tooling
ci-helpers
Shared GitHub Actions workflows and Bash utilities for CI/CD across many repositories — tests, builds, deploys and PR gates as reusable presets. It publishes this site.
script-helpers
A Bash helper library for the things every script re-implements: logging, dialogs, git and directory handling. Usually vendored as a submodule.
git-lantern
A CLI that maps your local and GitHub repositories — branch status, ahead/behind counts, visibility and release packaging in one dashboard.
GitPulse
A self-hosted dashboard that analyses repositories for contributor impact, repo health and code quality, combining commit analytics with heuristic review signals.
vellum
A rich Markdown viewer for the terminal — syntax-highlighted code, inline images, clickable links, search and navigation history in a full TUI.
docforge
Generates developer references and end-user guides from any codebase, on push via GitHub Actions. Output tuned for NotebookLM.
image-view
A lightweight Rust CLI for terminal image previews and directory browsing. NikOS installs it.
Claude Code plugins
claude-docsmith
Generates user and developer documentation from a repository, using Claude or a local Ollama model.
claude-reelsmith
Batch-finishes a folder of video: audio enhancement, stabilisation, logo branding and news-style titles and captions.
Hardware and embedded
ink-mate
A local-first ESP32-S3 e-paper desk companion with voice input, a FastAPI gateway, Ollama support and safety-gated tool automation.
Pharos
A general-purpose Android display and control node for dashboards, telemetry, alerts, media and AI-assisted interfaces.
ShelfCast
Turns a Raspberry Pi into a touch-first dashboard for a Nook Simple Touch or an old Android tablet, with a local web UI and kiosk mode.
Kinect Forge
Turns a Kinect v1 into a practical 3D scanner for Ubuntu — capture, reconstruct, measure and export clean meshes.
Home Monitor
Django, React and a local Ollama brain watching air quality, weather and sensors, with Home Assistant sync.
Applications
ScanContext
A free, local-first medical image and report viewer with optional AI assistance, for Windows, macOS and Linux. Data stays on your computer. Not a medical device.
DenialShield
An automated assistant for drafting rebuttals to medical claim denials.
orthodox-calendar
Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox saints, name-days, liturgical readings, moon phases and ICS feeds — FastAPI and React across 17 traditions.
PravKal
A Free Pascal TUI port of the classic DOS Serbian Orthodox calendar — Cyrillic UI, parallel Julian/Gregorian dates, Alexandrian Paschalion and a 372-feast database.
500 A.D.
A mobile-optimised turn-based Byzantine strategy game covering 500–1453 AD, with 12 historical leaders and a 24,000-tile Mediterranean map.
Tool suite
Distrodeck
Portable Linux workstation management.
IsoForge
Linux image download and USB flashing.
ai-runner
Archive landing page for a local Ollama runner.
KioskFrame
Photo-frame and dashboard appliance.
Elsewhere
github.com/nikolareljin — everything above, plus the smaller utilities that did not make this page.