Ichi (一) means "one" in Japanese, representing this project to unify conversational AI across Apple platforms. One of the personal aim was to create a Japanese tutor to learn basics of the language for my trip to Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan.
Love this project? Check out my books to explore more of AI and iOS development:
Your support helps to keep this project growing!
Ichi is an experimental project that explores conversational AI capabilities across iOS, macOS, and visionOS. The project's name is inspired by a Japanese woman I met at a conference, who ignited the spark into coding again.
Last September, using online providers for speech-to-speech was expensive, and I wanted to take the on-device route instead. Local LLMs are still not there yet, but one day.
- Privacy-First: All processing happens on-device - no data leaves your device
- Conversational AI: Powered by on-device LLMs (Qwen model)
- Speech Recognition: Real-time speech-to-text conversion
- Text-to-Speech: Natural voice synthesis using Kokoro TTS
- Cross-Platform: Supports iOS, macOS, and visionOS
- Beautiful UI: Modern SwiftUI interface with smooth animations
- Onboarding: Guided setup with model downloads