Setting Up Ornith-1.0 Locally on Debian – Free Claude Alternative

Summary of What I Accomplished Today

Today I successfully installed and set up Ornith-1.0-9B, a powerful open-source AI coding model, on my Debian system.

What I did:

  • Installed Ollama
  • Downloaded and ran the Ornith-1.0-9B model
  • Created a clean alias (ornith) for easy access
  • Verified the local API is working
  • Installed the Continue extension in VS Code
  • Got the foundation ready to use Ornith directly inside VS Code

I now have a completely free, private, local AI assistant that can help with coding, and I can run it anytime with ollama run ornith.

Tomorrow I plan to finish connecting it smoothly inside VS Code.