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Synoec

Synoec

On Windows, Synoec’s own Local AI service hosts Bonsai 2 (27B, the official weights with vision, tools and DFlash2 drafting) on this computer’s GPU with NInfer. Synoec builds and hosts nothing for it. The app carries one small pinned manifest (apps/desktop/assets/local-ai/ninfer.json); setup downloads NInfer’s Windows release (2026-11-03.1, CUDA 13.4, two split-archive volumes) from Synoec’s own mirror of it (the ninfer-2026-11-03.1 prerelease on the Synoec repository, since upstream deletes each previous release when it publishes the next) and the model from Hugging Face, checking every file against its pinned SHA-256 and the release’s own SHA256SUMS.txt. The mirror is in a private repository, so the manifest carries a read-only GitHub token for it; the token goes to GitHub’s API only.

The tab shows Hosting (GPU, disk, provider and that it takes turns with Ollama), Startup (Start with Synoec and Keep running after Synoec closes), the service’s status line with the context window Bonsai was sized to, then two cards: Bonsai 2, which installs or removes, and Image Generation, an optional second download that lets Bonsai make images (below). Synoec chooses the context window and KV-cache format for the card.

The provider lists one model, Bonsai 2 (bonsai2): images, tools, structured output, thinking at none, low, medium or xhigh (xhigh by default, none for presentation passes), 16,384 output tokens and the sized context window. The provider is an ordinary OpenAI-compatible Connection named bonsai-local-…, so its budget, usage and concurrency rules are those of a local endpoint. Profiles from earlier versions, which listed a model per weights file, move to Bonsai 2 on the next start, keeping it as their starting model.

  1. Install on the card checks the Visual C++ runtime, the hardware and free disk before any download, downloads and verifies the runtime and model, unpacks the runtime with Windows’ own tar.exe, starts the service, waits for the model to load, creates the provider and activates its model. The card shows each step and its progress; Cancel is on the status line. A failed setup shows Retry; what was downloaded is kept.
  2. Add the provider to a Profile yourself in Profiles & Providers.

A missing Microsoft Visual C++ runtime gets its own card with Microsoft’s download page and Check again; Synoec does not install it.

Everything lives in .synoec\local-ai under Synoec’s home folder (%USERPROFILE%\.synoec, or SYNOEC_HOME): the record local-ai.json, the api-key file only this user can read, service.conf, service.log, the runtime in runtime-<recipe>\ and the model in models\. Setup does not ask for a folder.

The Windows installer offers the same setup before Synoec first opens. After copying the app it checks this PC. Its Local AI page names the graphics card; on a card that passes (driver, architecture and free VRAM, as below) it offers Bonsai 2 with two centered buttons, Skip for now or Set up, saying whether it is already on this computer, and otherwise says why local AI cannot run there. A last page sums up what Synoec will set up and points to the Local AI tab for changes. Set up then downloads the runtime and model on a Downloading Bonsai 2 page before the installer finishes; Cancel keeps what was downloaded. When Synoec first opens it finds every file in place, starts the service and adds the provider, without downloading again; a download that failed in the installer is retried there. Bonsai is a provider from that first launch: its name is claimed before the window opens, onboarding lists it and its model on every screen, and a Profile can include it straight away. Finishing onboarding waits for setup to save the provider, then saves the Profile with it. A message sent before Bonsai is ready waits with Bonsai is waking up. Onboarding has no Local AI step of its own. A silent install takes /BONSAI=1.

On a card with 11 GB or more, the Bonsai offer also has an unticked Image generation box naming its download (about 19 GB). Ticked, the download page fetches it after Bonsai; an upgrade that keeps Bonsai shows only that box. Silently, /BONSAIIMAGE=1 adds it.