Getting started with Tholos AI

Tholos AI is a private AI workstation that runs entirely on your own machine — no cloud, no account, no data leaving your device. This guide takes you from a fresh install to your first offline workflow in about five minutes.

1. Download and install

Grab the installer for your platform from the Download page. It’s a single installer (around 200 MB) for Windows 10/11 or macOS 12+. There’s no sign-up and no telemetry — run the installer and launch the app.

2. Your free trial starts automatically

On first launch, a 14-day free trial begins on its own. There’s nothing to enter:

• No account, no email, no key. The trial activates locally on first run.
• Full Professional features. You get the complete Professional edition — persistent Knowledge Base, batch processing, the infographic generator, and the guided skill builder — with no quotas, watermarks, or quality reduction.
• One trial per machine. The trial is tied to your hardware, so reinstalling won’t reset the clock.

3. Load a model

Tholos AI runs open-weight models locally. Open the in-app model catalog and download one to get started:

• Pick a tier that suits your hardware — Light, Balanced, or Power. Lighter models run comfortably on modest machines; larger ones reward more RAM and a GPU.
• Prefer your own weights? Drop in any GGUF LLM or ONNX speech/OCR model.
• You’ll typically want at least one language model plus any specialty model (such as transcription or OCR) for the workflow you have in mind.

4. Run your first workflow

A good first task is Document Q&A:

1. Open a new chat and attach a PDF or Word document.
2. Ask a question in plain language — for example, “What are the key obligations in this contract?”
3. Tholos AI retrieves the relevant passages and answers with citations, entirely on-device.

From there, explore the other workflows: summarization, PII redaction, private translation, meeting-note transcription, entity extraction, contract review, and OCR. See the full list on the Features page.

5. Go fully offline

Once your models are downloaded, disconnect from the internet entirely. Chat, retrieval, OCR, transcription, and redaction all keep working — there are no required network calls.

6. Activate a license when you’re ready

To keep using Tholos AI after the trial, enter a license key from Settings. Activation is a one-time online check; after that the app runs offline indefinitely. Not sure which edition fits? Read Which edition is right for you? or compare plans on the Pricing page.

Already purchased? You can view your licenses, reveal your keys, and manage renewals any time from My account.