How to Create Local AI Agents wit Foundry Local and Qwen

Skill wey go help for Lesson 17 – Creating Local AI Agents. Use am to help person wey dey learn build agent wey sabi reason, dey call tools, and dey search documentation all na inside dem machine — no cloud inference. Make every recommendation stand gidigba for lesson content and the runnable notebook.

Triggers

Activate this skill when person wey dey learn want:

• Run agent fully inside device for privacy, cost, or offline reasons.
• Serve model locally with Foundry Local and connect via the OpenAI-compatible endpoint.
• Use Qwen function-calling model to make local tool calls correct.
• Add local RAG (Chroma) or local MCP server.
• Design hybrid local/cloud routing way.

Core mental model

Small Language Model (SLM) dey trade wide knowledge for privacy, cost, and offline work. The best way: make the SLM dey organize and make tools carry the heavy work. The model no need to know the codebase — e need to know wen to call read_file and search_docs. Dis one dey play to SLM strength (small decisions like tool choice) and avoid hin weakness (big knowledge, long multi-hop reasoning).

Why these specific pieces

• Foundry Local get OpenAI-compatible HTTP endpoint, so cloud agent code fit transfer by just changing base_url (and using local fake API key). E also dey choose best build (CPU/GPU/NPU) for machine.
• Qwen models get epp to call functions and always dey give correct tool calls — na dis one make local chat model become local agent.
• Chroma dey run inside process and dey store vectors for disk, so all RAG work (embed → store → retrieve → reason) remains local.
• MCP na transport, no be cloud service: MCP server fit run local with stdio.

Setup essentials

foundry model run qwen2.5-7b-instruct
foundry service status

from foundry_local import FoundryLocalManager
from openai import OpenAI

manager = FoundryLocalManager("qwen2.5-7b-instruct")
client = OpenAI(base_url=manager.endpoint, api_key=manager.api_key)  # lokal plassholder

About 8 GB RAM na minimum wey make sense; GPU/NPU fit help but dem no mandatory.

Key patterns wey you fit repeat

Show the learner the notebook 17-local-agent-foundry-local.ipynb:

• Sandboxed tools: every file tool dey resolve paths and no allow anything wey dey outside one project root — even if na local, tool dey run wit user permissions.
• Tool-calling loop: register tools with OpenAI tools schema, run requested tools locally, give the results back, keep am up till final answer.
• Local RAG: put docs inside Chroma collection; search_docs go return top-k chunks.
• Local MCP: connect to local server thru stdio; scope am to project directory and check outputs well.

Hybrid routing (local as one of the models)

Situation	Where e dey run
Sensitive data / offline	Local SLM
Simple, bounded task	Local SLM (cheap, fast)
Hard multi-hop reasoning on non-sensitive data	Cloud model
Cloud outage	Local SLM (graceful degradation)

Dis one dey mirror di model-routing idea from Lesson 16, with workstation as one of di routes. Make you like designs wey fit fall back to local so agent go degrade in quality, no be just fail completely.

Guardrails for the assistant

• Keep every file/tool work confined to sandboxed project directory.
• No send code or data go cloud when the learner talk say na privacy/offline e wan — keep everything local.
• Set correct expectations for SLM quality; rely on tools and RAG, no be the model memorized knowledge.
• Note say Lesson 17 no get Foundry Responses endpoint, so cloud smoke-test ka no go work — make sure by running notebook local.

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Disclaimer: Dis document don translate wit AI translation service Co-op Translator. Even tho we dey try make am correct, abeg make you know say automated translation fit get errors or mistakes. Di original document for dia own language na im be di correct source. For important info, make person wey sabi human translation do am. We no go responsible for any misunderstanding or wrong understanding wey fit happen because of dis translation.