Giving Ollama a Mouth, Ears, and a 3.5-Inch Screen: Building a Voice-First Pocket Terminal AI with Coni & Whisper

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 15:20:00 +0900

Let’s take a look at the state of conversational AI today.

If you want to talk to an LLM, the tech industry usually insists you follow one of two paths:

Open a web browser, load a 250MB single-page JavaScript application, agree to eight privacy policies, and hand your credit card to an API that bills you $0.03 for every syllable.
Install an Electron desktop app that devours 1.8 GB of RAM before it even finishes rendering its animated microphone widget.

Whatever happened to small, dedicated, delightful computing devices? The kind of hardware gadgets you pick up with one hand, tap a button, talk to, and get an instant, unfiltered answer—without corporate telemetry or subscriptions?

Voice on NicoLabs

Giving Ollama a Mouth, Ears, and a 3.5-Inch Screen: Building a Voice-First Pocket Terminal AI with Coni & Whisper