Self-hosted RSS aggregation with an optional on-device LLM and a paper-and-ink interface. One Go binary, one container, one tab.
AI is fully optional
The summary card, model picker, and Ollama sidecar are an opt-out feature, not a dependency. Set EMBER_DISABLE_SUMMARIES=1 (or run the stack without the ollama container) and the reader works exactly the same â minus the summary card. No model download, no inference, no LLM code paths run. Even when enabled, everything stays on your box; no article content leaves the host.
Most RSS readers are either bloated cloud services that mine your reading habits, or unmaintained scripts from the Google Reader exodus. Ember is what an opinionated 2026 reader looks like: a single Go binary you run on your own box, a paper-and-ink interface, and â only if you want it â small-local-LLM summaries for the days you can't read 300 articles.
git clone https://github.com/brandonhon/ember.git
cd ember/deploy
cp .env.example .env
# Set EMBER_SESSION_KEY and EMBER_ADMIN_PASSWORD
docker compose up -dOpen https://localhost, log in, click a starter pack. You'll see articles within a minute.
See Getting started for details.