LM Studio, Ollama and Jan made running AI on your own computer normal. They’re excellent at it. Henchman starts where they stop: it’s not a model runner but a crew that puts a model to work for you.
Model runners give you the engine
LM Studio and Jan are desktop apps for finding, downloading and chatting with models, and Ollama runs models from a simple install that other apps can use. All three work on Mac, Windows and Linux, and running models locally is free. They’re moving towards agents, too: LM Studio now has Bionic, an agent for documents and code, and Jan has a Cowork preview. LM Studio and Ollama also sell cloud plans for bigger models.
Henchman gives you the crew
Henchman is a Mac app where the model is just the brain. You hire henchmen with names and personalities, and they remember you, search the web and show answers as cards, keep your calendar and reminders, run routines like a morning brief, and answer from Telegram, Discord or Slack direct messages while your Mac is awake. The thinking happens on your Mac with open models you add.
Which one fits
If you want to explore models or run a model server for other apps, pick LM Studio, Ollama or Jan. If you want a private assistant that gets things done, Henchman is built for that.