The Private AI project became my answer to this dilemma. I built a self-hosted LibreChat setup on AWS that gives me access to multiple AI models while keeping data under my control. LibreChat is a pretty cool open-source project, a ChatGPT-style chat platform with a mature, enterprise-grade foundation that ensures full privacy and rich configurability.
What started as a personal solution quickly became something bigger – a repeatable blueprint for any organization struggling with the same privacy-versus-capability trade-offs.
Here’s what I ended up with: LibreChat, an innovative open-source project that gives you a web interface rivaling ChatGPT but running on your own server. This competitive alternative lets you switch seamlessly between local models and cloud models from AWS Bedrock. When working with sensitive documents, everything stays local. When you need the power of Claude or GPT-4, you can use those too.
The setup includes document processing where you can upload PDFs and chat with them without files ever leaving your server. Everything runs in Docker containers with proper user management – perfect for teams that need to collaborate while maintaining data sovereignty.