Introduction
NabaOS is a self-hosted, privacy-first AI agent runtime built in Rust. Think of it as “The Android for AI Agents” – an open operating system where you control which agents run, which LLM backends they use, and what data ever leaves your machine.
Why NabaOS Exists
Every mainstream AI agent today sends every request to a remote LLM, even when you have asked the same question a hundred times before. That is slow, expensive, and a privacy leak. NabaOS fixes this with a five-tier semantic caching pipeline that resolves up to 90% of daily requests locally, cutting LLM costs by roughly 85% while keeping your data on your hardware.
Request
|
v
+---------------------+ < 0.1 ms Cost: $0.00
| Tier 0: Fingerprint |-- HIT ------> Done (exact-match hash)
+---------------------+
| MISS
v
+---------------------+ 5-10 ms Cost: $0.00
| Tier 1: BERT ONNX |-- classify --> W5H2 intent (8 classes)
+---------------------+
|
v
+---------------------+ < 10 ms Cost: $0.00
| Tier 2: SetFit ONNX |-- classify --> W5H2 intent (54 classes)
+---------------------+
|
v
+---------------------+ < 20 ms Cost: $0.00
| Tier 2.5: Sem Cache |-- HIT ------> Done (cached execution plan)
+---------------------+
| MISS
v
+---------------------+ ~ 1 s Cost: ~$0.005
| Tier 3: Cheap LLM |-- solved ---> Done + cache for next time
+---------------------+
| too complex
v
+---------------------+ 5-120 s Cost: $0.50-5.00
| Tier 4: Deep Agent |-- solved ---> Done + decompose into cache
| (Manus/Claude/GPT) |
+---------------------+
Key Differentiators
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Multi-backend. Route tasks to Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, Google Gemini, Manus, DeepSeek, or a local model – whichever is cheapest and best for the job. No single-vendor lock-in.
-
Constitutional governance. Every agent operates under a YAML constitution that defines allowed domains, spending limits, and hard boundaries. The agent cannot modify its own constitution.
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Privacy by default. The five-tier pipeline means the vast majority of your requests never leave your machine. Credentials and PII are scanned and redacted before any external API call.
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Agent catalog. Browse the catalog, install an agent with one command, and start it. Agents run in sandboxed WASM modules with permission-gated access to your data.
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Channels everywhere. Interact through Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, a web dashboard, or the CLI. Same agent, same constitution, every channel.
Who Is It For?
- Privacy-conscious professionals who want AI assistance without sending every message to a cloud provider.
- Developers who want to build, test, and deploy custom agents with a proper permission model and caching layer.
- Regulated industries (legal, healthcare, finance) that need auditable, constitution-enforced AI workflows where data residency matters.
- Self-hosters who run their own infrastructure and want an agent runtime that respects that philosophy.
What’s Next
Head to Installation to get NabaOS running in under five minutes, or read about the Architecture if you want to understand the system before you install it.