Garbanzo

Self-hosted · Apache-2.0 · WhatsApp-first

Your community's AI,
on your hardware.

Garbanzo sits in your group chats and actually helps — answering with live transit and weather data, welcoming newcomers, remembering what your community cares about. Multi-provider LLM routing with failover, and every byte stays on a machine you own.

Start building See it in chat

docker compose up -d · runs on a Raspberry Pi 5 · SQLite or Postgres

Deployed before your coffee cools

Three commands on any Docker host — a Raspberry Pi 5 is plenty. Your keys, your data, your volumes.

# 1. configure
git clone https://github.com/jjhickman/garbanzo-bot.git
cd garbanzo-bot && npm run setup
# 2. run
docker compose up -d

What it does all day

Answers with live data

Native tool calling: ask about transit, weather, venues, news, or books in plain language — the model pulls real data mid-reply. No commands to memorize.

Remembers your community

Durable facts — who runs book club, where trivia happens — extracted automatically or curated by you, recalled across every conversation with vector retrieval.

Keeps plans on track

Detects event proposals, enriches them with weather and transit, and nudges the chat before start time. Welcomes intros. Recaps the week for you every Sunday.

Moderates without drama

Pattern + AI moderation with human-in-the-loop owner alerts, strike tracking, and rate limits. Edits can't dodge it — changed messages get re-checked.

Routes across providers

OpenAI GPT-5 family, Claude, Gemini, Bedrock, OpenRouter — configurable order with automatic failover, per-provider models, prompt caching, and cost tracking. Optional local Ollama for small talk.

Shows you everything

A token-gated admin page for spend and activity, Prometheus metrics, and a pre-provisioned Grafana dashboard — one compose profile away, on the same Pi.

Where it runs

Back the roadmap

Garbanzo is an independent open-source project. Support funds provider integrations, AI workflow improvements, and reliable releases.

Bean Sprout

Roadmap updates and supporter shout-outs.

For individual supporters

Steady Simmer

Priority issue triage and monthly maintainer notes.

For active community operators

Kitchen Crew

Onboarding review and release planning input.

For production teams
Support on Patreon GitHub Sponsors