More than 2 years of homelab and i still can't build a local AI setup i actually want to use every day

Not complaining just genuinely confused :(

i've built servers. i've done proxmox clusters. i run jellyfin, nextcloud, a bunch of other stuff. i'm comfortable in a terminal. this isn't a skill issue.

But every local AI setup i've tried has some version of the same problem which is that the experience is noticeably worse than just opening a browser tab. and i know the reasons. i know about context windows and quantization and why my 3080 isn't the right tool. i understand all of it.

What i can't figure out is why nobody has shipped the thing that's obviously missing which is a box designed from scratch to be a local AI server that also handles your data. not a nas with ai features tacked on. not a gaming pc with a lot of drives. the actual purpose built thing.

synology and qnap are nowhere close. they're running models that were state of the art in like 2022. minisforum is interesting but it's still fundamentally a mini pc stretched to fit a nas shape.

is anyone actually happy with their current setup or are we all just coping?