Hayula: A Local-First AI Infrastructure on Consumer Hardware — Architecture, Services, and Lessons from Production Deployment

The current landscape of artificial intelligence infrastructure is dominated by cloud-based solutions. Major providers offer powerful GPU clusters, managed model serving, and scalable storage—but at the cost of vendor lock-in, data privacy exposure, recurring operational expenditure, and dependency on internet connectivity. These constraints are particularly acute for researchers and practitioners in regions with limited cloud access, those working with sensitive data, or those seeking to build self-sufficient AI systems.