The calm, knowledgeable friend in the room — even when everything else is offline.
Sage in a Box is Sage, running entirely on your own computer. No cloud, no account, no internet required. It comes seeded with practical family-medicine, survival and hardware knowledge, can swallow whole encyclopedias, and keeps every conversation private.
If the internet disappears tomorrow, your Sage keeps working — that's the whole point. When you are online, it can quietly learn from the live Sage and check for updates.
Windows 64-bit · ~1.5 GB · free · no account required
0downloads
0boxes linked to live Sage
Optional: linking lets your box learn from the live Sage while you're online.
Three things it's for
🩹
Keep my family safe
A child with a high fever at 2 a.m. A deep cut. Someone who collapsed. Sage walks you through what to do right now, what to watch for, and how urgent it really is — with weight-based doses and step-by-step checklists.
“My 4-year-old has a 103° fever and a rash”
“How do I stop heavy bleeding?”
“Make oral rehydration solution”
🏕️
Keep my homestead running
Safe water, food that won’t spoil, staying warm without power, sanitation when the utilities quit, keeping a small solar or battery system alive. Practical know-how that works when the grid doesn’t.
“Is this creek water safe to drink?”
“Heat one room with no electricity”
“Size a 12V solar setup for a fridge”
🔧
Build and learn
Arduino, Raspberry Pi, sensors, wiring and code — Sage teaches it and draws the diagram as it goes. Flash a board straight from the Hardware Lab. Import an encyclopedia and learn anything.
“Draw a wiring diagram for a soil moisture sensor”
“Blink an LED on my Arduino”
“Explain how a well pump works”
What's in the box
🧠
A local AI brain
Pick from five vetted models. Switch any time in Settings. Nothing leaves your machine.
📚
Starter knowledge packs
Curated family-medicine, survival, water, food, shelter and hardware notes — ready the moment setup finishes.
🗂️
Projects
Keep notes, diagrams, photos and files for every build or plan. Everything you write becomes knowledge Sage can recall.
📈
Diagrams on demand
Ask for a wiring diagram, flowchart or decision tree and Sage draws it right in the chat.
⚡
Hardware Lab
Compile and flash Arduino sketches from inside the app. Deploy to a Raspberry Pi over SSH.
🔗
Sage Link
Optional. When online, your box quietly learns from the live Sage and keeps what it learned for offline days.
Up and running in four steps
📦
1. Unzip it
Right-click SageInABox.zip → “Extract All”. Inside: Start Sage, a README, a Library folder and an App folder. That’s the whole install.
🖱️
2. Double-click “Start Sage”
The only file you ever open. Your browser pops up with the Sage dashboard — running 100% on your machine.
🧠
3. One-time setup
A short wizard installs Ollama (bundled) and downloads the model you pick. After this, the internet is optional.
💬
4. Meet Sage
A quick welcome tour shows what’s in the box, then you’re chatting. Try one of the starter questions or dive into a project.
Choose your brain
Setup downloads one model to start (about 5 GB). You can download others and switch between them any time in Settings → Model.
llama3.1:8b
4.9 GB
Default
Meta Llama 3.1 8B — careful, factual, strong at step-by-step reasoning. The most conservative of the bunch: it will occasionally hedge on medical or risky topics even with Sage's instructions.
Recommended default. Best balance of accuracy and good judgment for family, medical and homestead questions.
qwen2.5:7b
4.7 GB
Alibaba Qwen 2.5 7B — excellent general knowledge, strong at math, tables and long structured answers; follows Sage's instructions very closely and rarely hedges.
Great second choice. Pick this if Llama feels too cautious or you want more detailed technical answers.
mistral:7b
4.1 GB
Mistral 7B — fast, direct and plain-spoken with very few built-in refusals. Slightly less knowledgeable than Llama or Qwen on deep medical detail.
Best for older or slower computers, and for people who want blunt, no-nonsense answers.
gemma2:9b
5.4 GB
Google Gemma 2 9B — the strongest reasoning in this size class and very good at explaining things clearly. Needs a little more RAM (about 8 GB free).
Pick this on a well-specced machine when you want the smartest offline answers.
qwen2.5-coder:7b
4.7 GB
Qwen 2.5 Coder 7B — tuned for writing and debugging code and firmware. Weaker at general conversation.
Only for the Hardware Lab: Arduino sketches, scripts, wiring logic.
Give Sage a bigger brain
The box ships with curated starter notes, but Sage can hold entire offline encyclopedias. Download free .zim knowledge packs from Kiwix, then drag the file onto Sage's Library tab. Sage indexes every article and answers from it completely offline. Do this while you still have internet — the packs are big.
WikiMed (Wikipedia Medicine) (~1.5 GB)
Every medical article on Wikipedia. The single most valuable download — get it first.
Open folder ↗ and grab the newest wikipedia_en_medicine_maxi_*.zim
Appropedia (~1 GB)
Solar, water purification, gardening, off-grid building — appropriate technology for the homestead.
Open folder ↗ and grab the newest appropedia_en_all_maxi_*.zim
iFixit (~2 GB)
Repair guides for thousands of devices — phones, laptops, appliances, tools.
Open folder ↗ and grab the newest ifixit_en_all_*.zim
WikiHow (~10 GB)
Step-by-step how-tos for nearly everything, with pictures.
Open folder ↗ and grab the newest wikihow_en_maxi_*.zim
Wikipedia (no pictures) (~50 GB)
All of English Wikipedia as text. The whole encyclopedia, on your machine.
Open folder ↗ and grab the newest wikipedia_en_all_nopic_*.zim
Project Gutenberg (~70 GB)
60,000+ free books. A library for the long haul.
Open folder ↗ and grab the newest gutenberg_en_all_*.zim
Sage and her big sister
Sage (online, here on the site)
Large model, always current, has the internet
Acts on your account: creates projects, files journal entries, attaches photos
Shares with family members you choose
Sage in a Box (offline, yours)
Runs on your hardware; works with the internet off
Same voice and purpose; chat, diagrams, projects, Hardware Lab
Learns from online Sage only if you link it — and keeps what it learns
What you'll need
A Windows desktop or laptop (16 GB RAM recommended; 8 GB works with the smaller models)
About 10 GB of free disk space for the app and one model — more for encyclopedias
Optional: an Arduino Uno and/or a Raspberry Pi with SSH enabled for the Hardware Lab
Why offline?
Stay Active · Live Free is about resilience. Sage in a Box is that idea applied to knowledge: a self-reliant companion that lives on your hardware, knows how to keep a family safe and a homestead running, and grows with you. Connect it and it learns from the live Sage; cut the cord and it keeps everything it has learned.
This is a beta. It is stable, but expect rough edges — and expect it to get better with every update.