Local AI with VS Code

Local AI with VS Code is the definitive guide for developers, engineers, data scientists, and privacy-conscious creators who want to build intelligent applications without sending a single byte to the cloud. Written by Liora Quillan, this hands-on book shows you how to turn VS Code into a powerful, offline AI development environment using open-source LLMs, privacy-first extensions, and fully local inference engines such as Ollama, Continue, Llama.cpp, GPT4All, and more.
With cloud AI platforms becoming increasingly expensive and restrictive, developers are turning to a new generation of local, open-source large language models for coding, automation, debugging, RAG pipelines, and intelligent agent workflows. This book teaches you exactly how to run these models efficiently, privately, and securely - right on your laptop or workstation.

You'll learn step-by-step how to:

• Install and optimize VS Code for local AI workflows
• Run advanced models through Ollama, Continue, and Llama.cpp
• Build offline copilots, code assistants, and autonomous developer agents
• Implement local RAG, embeddings, vector search, and document Q&A
• Use zero-cloud extensions to keep your data 100% private
• Create AI-powered automation with Python, Node.js, and shell tools
• Develop security-hardened, air-gapped AI pipelines for enterprise or regulated environments
• Optimize performance on CPU-only systems (no GPU required)