Build Your Own AI Coding Assistant in JupyterLab with Ollama and Hugging Face

A step-by-step guide to creating a local coding assistant that boosts productivity without sending your data to the cloud

Image by Author

First published on Towards Data Science on Mar 24, 2025

Jupyter AI brings generative AI capabilities right into the Jupyter interface. Having a local AI assistant ensures privacy, reduces latency, and provides offline functionality, making it a powerful tool for developers. In this article, we’ll learn how to set up a local AI coding assistant in JupyterLab using Jupyter AI, Ollama and Hugging Face. By the end of this article, you’ll have a fully functional coding assistant in JupyterLab capable of autocompleting code, fixing errors, creating new notebooks from scratch, and much more, as shown in the screenshot below.

Coding assistant in Jupyter Lab via Jupyter AI | Image by Author

⚠️ Jupyter AI is still under heavy development, so some features may break. As of writing this article, I’ve tested the setup to confirm it works, but expect potential changes as the project evolves. Also the performance of the assistant depends on the model that you select so make…