Question 1

Is Rufous free?

Accepted Answer

Yes, Rufous is open source under Apache-2.0, requires no account, and has no paid version.

Question 2

Which models does Rufous support?

Accepted Answer

Rufous is built for small models in the 2B to 12B parameter range, including models like qwen3.5:4b and gemma4:e4b, and runs them locally on your own machine.

Question 3

Does Rufous send my data anywhere?

Accepted Answer

No. Rufous runs locally on your machine and nothing about your usage is sent back to the team.

Question 4

How does Rufous catch mistakes made by small models?

Accepted Answer

Rufous keeps an uneditable Record of every tool call, then checks the model's final report against that Record before the turn ends to catch missing or incorrect writes.

Question 5

How can I install Rufous?

Accepted Answer

On macOS and Linux you can install it with a curl command, and on Windows there is a zip download, all from rufous.chat.

Rufous

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