System Requirements#

Windows OS#

  • Windows 10 — Build 19041 or later

  • Windows 11 — All builds supported

  • Windows Server 2022 — Not recommended for interactive use

PowerShell 5.1+ (included with Windows 10/11).

Hardware#

Processor#

  • Recommended — Intel Core i7 or i9 (10th generation or newer)

    • 8-16 cores ideally

    • Examples: i7-10700, i9-12900, Core Ultra (Meteor Lake)

  • Minimum — Intel Core i5 (8th generation or newer)

  • GPU (optional) — Intel integrated GPU (Iris Xe or newer) or discrete GPU

    • Accelerates LLM inference by 2-4x

    • Not required for baseline functionality

Memory#

  • Minimum — 16 GB RAM

  • Recommended — 32 GB RAM

  • Optimal — 64 GB RAM (headroom for models plus browser and OS)

The default LLM is Qwen/Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507 (int8) configured in rag-service/config.yaml. With less than 16 GB RAM, switch to a smaller Qwen instruct model in that config for smoother performance.

Storage#

  • Minimum — 50 GB free SSD space

    • ~30-40 GB for LLM + embedding + TTS models

    • ~5-10 GB for Chroma vector database (scales with documents)

    • ~5 GB for system and cache

  • Recommended — 100 GB+ free space (NVMe SSD preferred)

HDD is not recommended — model loading and inference will be slow.

Microphone#

  • Not required — Audio is captured through your web browser

  • If you want to use a non-default microphone, configure it in Windows Settings > Sound

Software Dependencies#

Python#

  • Python 3.10 or 3.11 (3.12+ not yet tested)

  • Download from python.org

  • During installation, check “Add Python to PATH”

Git for Windows#

Visual C++ Build Tools#

  • Required for building Python packages (e.g., cryptography)

  • Download from Microsoft

  • Or install Visual Studio Community with C++ workload

Network#

  • Outbound internet — Required on first run to download:

    • AI models from Hugging Face (~30-50 GB)

    • Python packages from PyPI

  • Localhost ports — Services bind to:

    • 7860 — ai-teaching-assistant ui (browser interface)

    • 8010 — audio-analyzer (speech-to-text)

    • 8011 — text-to-speech

    • 8012 — kiosk-core (orchestrator)

    • 8020 — rag-service (knowledge base & LLM)

  • Firewall — Windows Defender Firewall may prompt; allow when running

Browser Requirements#

Any modern browser:

  • Microsoft Edge ✓ (recommended)

  • Google Chrome ✓

  • Mozilla Firefox ✓

  • Safari ✓

Must have:

  • JavaScript enabled

  • WebAudio API support (for microphone capture)

  • Cookies enabled

  • Ability to access http://127.0.0.1:7860

Microphone permission — When you first open the interface, your browser will request microphone access. Click “Allow”.

Performance Tips#

For Faster Inference#

  1. Use a smaller Qwen instruct model than the default Qwen3-4B-Instruct

  2. Enable GPU acceleration if you have an Intel GPU (Iris Xe or newer)

  3. Increase system RAM to avoid disk swapping

  4. Use NVMe SSD for model storage

For Better Answers#

  1. Use a larger Qwen instruct model than the default Qwen3-4B-Instruct

  2. Upload more course materials to the knowledge base

  3. Enable reranking in configuration (improves answer relevance)

  4. Adjust top-K — Retrieve more chunks for complex topics

For Multi-User Deployment#

  • Ensure machine has 64+ GB RAM

  • Use a modern i9 CPU

  • Consider running only rag-service on one machine and audio-analyzer + text-to-speech on another (advanced)

Verification#

Before running the application, verify your setup:

# Check Windows version
[System.Environment]::OSVersion.Version

# Check Python installation
python --version

# Check Git installation
git --version

# Verify network connectivity
curl https://www.google.com

All commands should succeed.

Troubleshooting Prerequisites#

Issue

Solution

“Python not found”

Add Python to PATH: Go to Settings > Environment Variables and add Python install directory

“Port already in use”

Find and stop process by PID: `netstat -ano

“Insufficient disk space”

Use an external SSD or upgrade storage

“Out of memory”

Close other applications or upgrade RAM

“Slow inference”

Disable background tasks (Windows Update, antivirus scans) during use

See Troubleshooting for more issues.