Tribunus · San Francisco · founded 2024

Local AI that works with you, not at you.

Tribunus is an independent software company in San Francisco, founded by Julian Torres. We build Tessera Studio — a desktop app that runs large language models on your own computer. Fast, private, useful. No cloud, no account, no data leaving your machine.

Founded October 2024· San Francisco, California· One product in flight· Open source
The product

Tessera Studio.

A desktop app for running large language models on your own computer. macOS today, Linux in progress. It's the only product we're shipping in 2026.

Tessera Studio

developer preview · macOS

A Swift desktop app for running LLMs locally. Calibrated per-tensor quantization, native speculative decoding, and Apple Neural Engine prefill on M-series Macs.

  • Built on Tessera — our C++ fork of llama.cpp with evolutionary per-tensor calibration (T640) and DFlash / DSpark drafters
  • Swift app core with a real agent loop, manifest-based skills (SKILL.md), and a local-first file system
  • Every run keeps a log you can check — what loaded, what ran, what happened
Open tessera.tribunus.dev
Ships from github.com/Tribunus-dev/tessera · open source
At a glance
macOS today, Linux in progress
Swift on macOS, CMake on the C++ side. Linux builds in CI; no public installer yet.
Stack
Swift SwiftUI C++ · tessera Core ML ANE CMake Linux · planned
Learn more
Founded by
JT
Julian Torres
Founder & sole maintainer · San Francisco, California
Current status

What is live, what is in progress, what is research.

Here's exactly where each project stands.

What
State
Where
Tessera Studio · macOSApple Silicon · developer preview
Live
Tessera Studio · Linux
In development
Tessera · C++ fork of llama.cppT640 calibration · DFlash / DSpark · ANE prefill
Live
Per-tensor evolutionary calibration (T640)
Live
tessera/tools
Prism EngineRust · constitutional ECS · research
Research
Live In development Planned / research
Work with Tribunus.

Beta access, collaboration, research, or investment — I read every email. The specific ways to work together are on the work-with-us page.