Project

Candice

Candice is my personal AI — the clearest expression of everything on the What I Believe page.

What she is

A personal AI I built with real tool use, long-term memory, multi-step reasoning, and — crucially — a check-with-me-first step before she does anything that actually matters. She's the agent layer I work through, not a replacement for my judgment.

Local-first

The AI I lean on most runs entirely on my own machine, one hundred percent on-device. My notes, my work, my second brain: none of it phones home.

Safe by construction

Being local-first isn't enough on its own, so she's built to stay honest. When a request does need a cloud model, the private details are masked on the way out and restored on the way back — the model reasons without ever seeing who it's about. Anything she reads from the outside world is screened for prompt injection first. And every day she audits her own behavior, turning her mistakes into rules she keeps.

Going native

Candice is becoming an Apple app built on on-device Foundation Models and App Intents, so she works from inside the tools I already use rather than a separate chat window. The server stays the brain; the app is just how I reach her.

She built this

This site — vhenjoseph.com — was built with Candice. Meet her at candiceai.vhenjoseph.com.

What I'm Building - The rest of the workshop.
What I Reach For - The tools behind Candice.