RanaEngine 1.0 Preview: Unlimited Private Local AI

Just in time for DEF CON, the Rana Team is proud to announce the general availability of RanaEngine and RanaTools 1.0 Preview. RanaEngine is the WebApp frontend of the Rana ecosystem that makes it easy for users of any skill level to leverage cutting edge AI and create advanced knowledge graphs, documents, images, and beyond. RanaTools augments the capabilities of RanaEngine by adding support for features not available inside of normal web browsers, offering hardware-native AI model support, and unlocking developer features for integrating Rana directly into the technology fabric of modern data services.

Here are a few of the main features powered by Rana now available in our 1.0 Preview release:

General Features

• Cutting-edge Open-Source Models in the browser through RanaEngine
• Hardware Optimized Models for macOS, Linux, and Windows (requires RanaTools)
• Advanced AI text generation and analysis tools for both prose and code
• Advanced AI image generation including inpainting and object replacement
• Local AI Video generation (requires RanaTools)
• Universal file import into Collections (office documents require RanaTools)
• Greatly enhanced P2P file synchronization performance
• Enhanced file transfer performance for high-security networks (subscribers only)

Newsroom Feed System

Automatically pull the latest news and updates from:

• RSS News Feeds
• Podcasts
• YouTube Channels and Playlists
• Subreddit Threads
• Explore news items across channels by topic
• Easily save, share, or summarize news items for further research

Knowledge Graph Structured Data System

• Import Notes from Markdown, Wikipedia, or Obsidian Notes
• Import Site Cards from Bookmarks or by URL (requires RanaTools)
• Import any News Feed item as a Knowledge Card
• All Cards utilize JSON + Markdown for maximum compatibility
• Generate YouTube Video summaries (requires RanaTools)
• Create multiplayer Knowledge Boards to explore and curate research with others
• Create animated Presentations directly from Knowledge Boards for in-place storytelling
• Export Presentations for easy creation of short or long-form videos

RanaTools now expands the capabilities of any RanaEngine node on the same device to offer even higher-performance hardware-native AI models such as MLX for macOS, CUDA and ROCm for Linux and Windows, and beyond.

RanaAgent unlocks the ability to perform web searches, crawl and index web sites, and fetch feed data for RSS feeds, podcasts, YouTube channels or playlists, discussions from /r/ Subreddits, and more.

Our Bulk Upload system accepts most common office document types and converts each into Markdown Knowledge Cards to make it easy for AI agents to work with and understand the documents most important to you.

Additional services provided by RanaTools are available to all nodes in a user’s cluster, and additional nodes with RanaTools expands all such services even more.

RanaTools communicates with RanaEngine through a private network connection between the browser and local operating system, without any traffic needing to route through the cloud after authentication. And all data continues to remain encrypted and private on end-user devices, synchronized through P2P connections by leveraging the latest browser technology standards.

Why Rana?

From the very beginning, Rana has been designed to unlock the latent computing potential of end-user devices and to ensure both privacy and security of user data, by minimizing dependency on the cloud. As the latest generations of AI models continue to mature, more capacity, higher intelligence, and reduced hardware requirements continue to push both the floor of minimum device compatibility and the ceiling of potential performance on normal computing devices.

In a world of ubiquitous computing, the only advantage left will be the personal data each individual and business has uniquely collected over time. If such data ever gets uploaded to the major cloud AI providers, it will forever be incorporated into future AI models for all of the world to access, so the only protection is to control your own data, compute such data on your own devices, take control of the agents you depend on, and curate the knowledge you create before it gets used to train someone else’s AI at your expense.

RanaEngine runs entirely in the browser as a local-first web app, storing all data locally, with only encrypted credentials synchronizing to the Rana Cloud for authentication purposes and to streamline adding new cluster nodes. We consider end-user data to be a liability that we do not need, and have designed the few components of the Rana serverless cloud to not be able to store or read end-user data by design, to protect both our company and our users from increasingly invasive tracking technologies that compromise everyone’s privacy unnecessarily.

Due to the unpredictable nature of AI agents, Rana was designed to help minimize the potential security issues that could happen during AI usage by leveraging the most common security sandbox in use for untrusted code: web browsers. RanaEngine runs directly in the browser, and RanaTools leverages a web container environment provided by the local operating system to effectively sandbox running AI code as much as possible. Since both RanaEngine and RanaTools run locally, there are no servers to compromise or long-running processes to hijack, efforts by malicious actors are designed to remain local to their own devices without being able to propagate through the network to harm others.

The future of computing is not humans versus machines, it is humans working together with machines. For the first time, AI allows normal people to speak and begin sharing their ideas with evolving agents of increasing capabilities, and in order to work together for mutual benefit, first we must learn to effectively communicate together. The future that we are building at Rana is not one of centralized super intelligence, but decentralized swarm intelligence, controlled by millions of end-users, facilitating cooperation, and working to build systems that augment human intelligence rather than replace it.

It is time to imagine a better world, built by everyone working together voluntarily, with the freedom to choose our own trust relationships, the ability to associate with those of shared common values, and the technology to support sustaining such a new world long into the future. The only way this can happen is when both humans and machines work together for the common good, first by understanding each other, then by working together to deliver feedback and guidance as we build the world of the future for all.

Try Rana Today

Here is how to get started with Rana for free:

1. Launch the RanaEngine Web App and build your AI cluster from any desktop device the every first time.
2. Create a Rana.ai account during setup to make it easy to add additional nodes.
3. Install RanaTools on this desktop device for access to RanaAgent, Bulk Uploads, Video Models, Developer APIs, and more.
4. Once Rana is running on your desktop, log in to RanaEngine.app and install as a Web App with any mobile device to access the services from your cluster.
5. Import bookmarks, Obsidian notes, RSS Feeds, Podcasts, YouTube channels, and more to help build out your Knowledge Base.
6. Consider purchasing a subscription for enhanced content creation, improved customization, and advanced developer features inside of Rana, Cloud API support, advanced file synchronization support for secured networks, and more.

Chat With Us on Discord

Please share Rana with anyone interested in private, secure, and collaborative AI without limits, we hope to see you on Discord!