Kronk — open source AI tooling for Go Local inference. Fewer moving parts. Explore Kronk
Ardan Labs home
Contact Us
Ardan Labs Logo

Let's Talk

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Go With Your Own Intelligence

Use Go for hardware-accelerated local inference with llama.cpp — and extend into speech and image generation through Bucky and Malina. Kronk provides a high-level SDK and a production-ready model server so you can run AI with fewer moving parts.

Full Details View on GitHub
Kronk mascot
kronk — get started
$ brew install ardanlabs/kronk/kronk
$ kronk server start

✓ installed kronk
✓ model server ready
- listen     : http://localhost:11435
- api        : OpenAI + Anthropic compatible

Why Kronk

Built for production-minded Go teams

Kronk explores a simpler path to production AI: bring inference closer to your Go application, reduce unnecessary services, and keep performance, cost, and control in your hands.

  1. 01

    Fewer moving parts

    Bring inference into your Go application instead of treating the model server as a permanent dependency.

  2. 02

    Run on your hardware

    GPU acceleration via CUDA, Metal, Vulkan, and ROCm — with automatic hardware detection and verified library installs.

  3. 03

    Familiar APIs

    OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions, Responses, embeddings, and reranking — plus an Anthropic-compatible Messages API.

  4. 04

    Built for Go teams

    Designed for engineers who want local-first systems they can own, operate, and ship with confidence.

SDK or model server

Same public APIs. Two ways to run.

The model server is built on the same SDKs available to Go applications. Choose the path that matches how your system needs to own inference.

Use the SDK when you need

  • Inference inside a Go process
  • Direct control over model loading and lifetime
  • No separate server process
  • Application-specific caching and concurrency

Use the model server when you need

  • HTTP APIs for one or more clients
  • OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible endpoints
  • Browser-based model management and testing
  • Authentication, rate limiting, metrics, and tracing

API surface

Compatible where it matters

Point existing clients and agents at a local Kronk endpoint — without rewriting your tool chain around a new protocol.

Chat Completions

OpenAI-compatible chat for tools, agents, and existing OpenAI clients pointed at a local endpoint.

Responses API

Modern response workflows for applications that need structured generation beyond basic chat turns.

Anthropic Messages

Anthropic-compatible Messages API so Claude-oriented tooling can talk to local models through Kronk.

Embeddings & reranking

Local embedding and reranking surfaces for RAG pipelines without sending documents off-network.

Capabilities

What you get

Hardware accelerated

GPU acceleration across major backends so models run where your capacity already lives.

Streaming & reasoning

Stream tokens as they generate, with support for reasoning-style workloads in the Go SDK.

Tool calling

Native function calling so models can invoke your Go functions with structured input and output.

Vision models

Prompt multimodal models with images alongside text for grounded local inference.

Model server & Browser UI

Manage models, test prompts, and integrate with OpenWebUI, OpenCode, and Claude Code.

Security & observability

Authentication, rate limiting, metrics, and tracing when you need a multi-client production surface.

The local AI stack

One foundation. Growing capabilities.

Kronk is the core. Bucky and Malina extend the same local-first philosophy into speech and image generation while keeping Go developers close to the system.

Kronk

Text, vision, embedding, and reranking through llama.cpp and yzma — the foundation of the stack.

Bucky

Local speech-to-text through whisper.cpp — transcriptions, translations, streaming, and diarization.

Malina

Experimental local image and video generation through stable-diffusion.cpp — text-to-image and beyond.

Kronk ready to run — local model server for Go

Get started

Install Kronk

On macOS or Linux, Homebrew is the recommended path. Start the model server, open the Browser UI, and the first model or SDK example can download compatible native libraries automatically.

Homebrew

brew install ardanlabs/kronk/kronk

Go install

go install github.com/ardanlabs/kronk/cmd/kronk@latest

Start the model server

kronk server start
# Browser UI → http://localhost:11435

Try an SDK example

git clone https://github.com/ardanlabs/kronk.git
cd kronk
make example-question

Deeper docs: kronkai.com/manual · Go API reference · GitHub

Platforms

Where Kronk runs

Compatible native library bundles are downloaded per host. Use the CLI as the source of truth for combinations supported by your install.

Linux

CPU amd64, arm64 · GPU CUDA, Vulkan; ROCm on amd64

macOS

CPU amd64, arm64 · GPU Metal on Apple Silicon

Windows

CPU amd64, arm64 · GPU CUDA, Vulkan, ROCm on amd64

Kronk AI: A Simpler Way to Build and Run AI Applications

From the Lab · Featured Read

Kronk AI: A Simpler Way to Build and Run AI Applications

Go deeper into the engineering question that started Kronk — why local-first inference changes the architecture, and what happens when the application owns more of its execution path.

“Why should you need a model server to deploy an AI application? Why can’t your AI app be the model server as well?”
— Bill Kennedy
Read the Article

Build AI systems you can own

Talk with Ardan Labs about local inference, private AI infrastructure, and production systems beyond API prototypes.

Explore AI Engineering

Leverage our experience. Get what you need.