KoboldCpp
A single-file local model server built for storytelling and roleplay, with the sampler controls that community actually uses.
- Self-hosted
- Active
- Allowed adult content
- Open source
At a glance
- Where it runs
- Self-hostedYou run it on your own machine. Nothing leaves it unless you send it.
- Adult content
- AllowedAdult content is permitted within the published rules.
- Trains on your content
- NoYour content is not used to train models.
- Status
- ActiveMaintained and working today.
- Account needed
- No
- Licence
- AGPL-3.0
- Cost
- Free and open source.
- What it keeps
- Local only.
What it takes to run
- Graphics memory
- No GPU needed
- System memory
- 8 GB, 16 GB recommended
- Disk
- about 10 GB
- Runs on
- Linux, macOS, Windows
Find what fits your machine on the tools page — pick your hardware from the first menu.
One executable, no installer, no Python environment. It loads a GGUF file and serves both its own writing-focused interface and the APIs that SillyTavern and friends expect.
Where Ollama optimises for the shortest path to a chatbot, KoboldCpp optimises for the person who wants to tune repetition penalty and context shifting at three in the morning. It is the usual backend recommendation in the roleplay community for exactly that reason.
Worth knowing before you start
- Built-in interface is plain Most people pair it with SillyTavern rather than using its own UI.
What it does
- Single executable, no install
- KoboldAI and OpenAI APIs
- Context shifting
- Full sampler control
- Optional image generation
Models it runs
How it relates to other tools
- a frontend for llama.cpp
- has a frontend SillyTavern
- succeeded by KoboldAI — KoboldCpp is the successor; this edge reads from the older tool
Signs of life
Checked automatically. These are the only figures on this page a machine wrote, and they say when they were taken.
- Last answered
- Yes, 3 hours ago Its website responded when we asked.
- Stars on GitHub
- 11,721 768 forks.
- Last commit
- 4 hours ago2026-09-16 01:49 UTC
- Latest release
- v1.121
- Archived copy
- Wayback Machine A snapshot, in case this one stops answering.
Categories
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