nico.dev
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What I’ve been working on

I love exploring new technologies, testing ideas and seeing what the browser can do. This is where those experiments end up, alongside articles, videos, podcast appearances and everything else I share along the way.

Screenshot 2026-08-07 at 08.30.46
Project
AUG 2026

LFM2.5 Edge Agent

nico-martin/LFM2.5-2.6B-WebGPU17

I built a research agent that runs entirely in the browser and puts its full think, plan, and act loop on display. Give it a question and it: - Creates an explicit action plan - Reasons about the next step - Chooses and calls tools - Inspects each result - Updates the plan and repeats It does not stop after one tool call. The agent keeps looping until every step in the plan is complete. Along the way, it can ask clarifying questions, use local context, delegate focused research to an isolated Wikipedia subagent, and collect sources. Once the plan is done, it turns the evidence into a cited response and downloadable research paper. The incredible part is the size: just 2.6B parameters. That makes LFM2.5 seriously fast on-device with WebGPU, while still being capable enough to plan, reason, use tools, and finish multi-step objectives. The model, agent loop, and inference pipeline all run locally. No inference server, no account, and prompts and outputs stay in the browser. Small models are not just autocomplete. They can be agents at the edge.

After using windows basically my whole life, it was on-device AI performance that finally pulled me over to apple. And honest...
Instagram
JUL 2026

After using windows basically my whole life, it was on-device AI performance tha...

programmier-bar
Podcast
JUL 2026

Transformers.js mit Nico Martin

programmier.bar

In dieser Folge begrüßen wir einen alten Bekannten in der programmier.bar: Nico Martin, Machine Learning Engineer bei Hugging Face und gern gesehener Podcast-Gast und programmier.con-Speaker.

After my week started in Bucharest, it ended at a rock concert in Oslo. Sort of. #ReactNorway took place at Rockefeller, a le...
Instagram
JUN 2026

After my week started in Bucharest, it ended at a rock concert in Oslo. Sort of....

CEE's biggest tech conference... ...also: Bucharest is great. This week I had the pleasure of speaking at @devtalksro, the la...
Instagram
JUN 2026

CEE's biggest tech conference... ...also: Bucharest is great. This week I had th...

programmier-bar-google-io
Podcast
JUN 2026

Google I/O 2026 aus Mountain View

programmier.bar

Die Google I/O ist für viele Entwickler:innen vor allem durch ihre Ankündigungen bekannt – doch wie fühlt sich die Konferenz eigentlich vor Ort an? Darüber sprechen Jan und Dennis mit Nico Martin, der in diesem Jahr nach Mountain View gereist ist. Nico berichtet von seinen Eindrücken auf dem weitläufigen Google-Gelände, den großen Keynotes und den zahlreichen Möglichkeiten, direkt mit den Teams hinter Chrome, Gemini und anderen Google-Produkten ins Gespräch zu kommen. Natürlich geht es auch um die großen Themen der diesjährigen Google I/O. Die Runde diskutiert die aktuellen Gemini-Ankündigungen, den hohen Produktionsaufwand hinter den Keynotes und die Frage, wie viel davon wirklich neu war. Besonders spannend waren für Nico die Produkt-Demos vor Ort, darunter die neue Google-Brille, die er selbst ausprobieren konnte. Außerdem werfen Jan, Dennis und Nico einen Blick auf die Rolle von Entwickler:innenkonferenzen im Allgemeinen. Sie vergleichen die Google I/O mit Formaten wie der Google Cloud Next und den lokalen Google I/O Connect Events und diskutieren, für wen sich ein Besuch lohnt.

transformersjs-v4
Video
MAY 2026

How Transformers.js Works: AI Models in JavaScript, Explained

Transformers.js brings state-of-the-art machine learning to JavaScriprt. In this intro, I explain the mental model behind Transformers.js: tensors, neural networks, ONNX, quantization, model loading, preprocessing, postprocessing, and the pipeline() API. We also look at what happens under the hood for text-generation and depth-estimation, and why one high-level API can support many different AI tasks.

Back from my first Silicon Valley trip. A lot to unpack. First of all: a great chance for Joshua Lochner and me to have a lit...
Instagram
MAY 2026

Back from my first Silicon Valley trip. A lot to unpack. First of all: a great c...

Biggest learning from @uphill_conf '26: being a speaker is so much easier than being an organizer 😅 After the last two years...
Instagram
MAY 2026

Biggest learning from @uphill_conf '26: being a speaker is so much easier than b...

browser-ml-at-scale
Podcast
APR 2026

Browser ML at Scale with Nico Martin

Señors @ Scale

This week, I spoke with Nico Martin, open source ML engineer at Hugging Face working on Transformers.js, and a Google Developer Expert in AI and web technology. Nico's path is unusual — he studied to become a teacher, worked as a ski instructor and a windsurf instructor, taught himself web development by building sites for friends, and went freelance for years before joining Hugging Face about six months ago. The role pulls together his obsession with progressive web apps, on-device AI, and Transformers.js — a library he was already building demos with before version one even shipped. In this episode, we cover how Transformers.js actually runs models in the browser, what an ML model really is under the hood, how tokenizers and quantization work, why ONNX matters as a runtime-agnostic standard, where WebGPU fits next to WebAssembly, and what the Prompt API in Chrome means for the future of in-browser LLMs.

gemma-4
Project
APR 2026

Gemma 4 Browser Assistant

nico-martin/gemma4-browser-extension1.1k

An on-device AI assistant that runs entirely in your browser using WebGPU and Transformers.js. This Chrome extension provides an intelligent agent that can understand natural language commands and interact with your browser through a set of specialized tools.

Blogpost
APR 2026

How to Use Transformers.js in a Chrome Extension

Hugging Face

An article I wrote about how to build a Chrome extension with on-device AI using Transformers.js and Gemma 4, covering Manifest V3 architecture, model loading in service workers, and building an agentic tool-calling loop.

transformersjs-v4
Video
MAR 2026

Transformers.js v4: State-of-the-art machine learning for the web

Transformers.js v4 is out!

jarvis
Project
AUG 2025

JARVIS

nico-martin/jarvis76

A modern AI assistant web application featuring voice interaction, real-time conversation, and MCP (Model Context Protocol) server integration.

Blogpost
JUL 2025

I'm joining 🤗 Hugging Face

LinkedIn

Beyond happy to announce that I'm joining 🤗 Hugging Face as a Machine Learning Engineer focused on WebML!

154_ig_fb_Nico_Martin
Podcast
JUL 2024

PWAs mit Nico Martin

programmier.bar

Lange war es still um PWAs, doch jetzt ist das Thema Progressive Web Apps gerade aktueller denn je: Zum einen hat der Bereich viel Aufmerksamkeit erfahren, als Apple im Frühjahr 2024 kurz davor war, das Feature unter iOS in Europa dauerhaft abzuschalten. Zum anderen erleben PWAs dank der neuen WebGPU-APIs und dem Hype um AI eine Art Renaissance. Aber was sind eigentlich Progressive Web Apps und was unterscheidet sie von „normalen“ Webseiten oder Bookmarks auf dem Homescreen? Und macht die Art der Anwendung für Endnutzer:innen wirklich einen Unterschied? All diesen Fragen und vielen weiteren gehen Dennis und Jan nach und sprechen dafür mit Nico Martin, Google Developer Expert fürs Web. Dabei geht’s nicht nur um APIs, Browser-Implementierungen und Webstandards, sondern auch darum, was User:innen von Webseiten erwarten und welche UX für sie relevant ist.

nicodev
Project
JUN 2024

Ask my PDF

nico-martin/ask-my-pdf109

A Webapp that uses Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and Large Language Models to interact with a PDF directly in the browser.

git-installer
Project
NOV 2022

Git Installer

nico-martin/git-installer31

Install and update WordPress themes and plugins directly from your Git repository via GitHub, Gitlab or Bitbucket.

AS_JSNation_Amsterdam_20220616_1291
Project
MAR 2022

SpeedWheels BLE Car

nico-martin/speed-wheels-ble-arduino

A toy car based on an Arduino Nano RP2040 that communicates over Bluetooth Low Energy and can be cntrolled with a webapplication that uses the Web Bluetooth API.

Screenshot 2026-08-07 at 08.24.12
Podcast
MAR 2022

Revision 521: WebBluetooth, WebUSB und WebNFC

Working Draft

Nico Martin, Google Developer Expert und Webtech-Nerd, erklärt in dieser Revision Schepp und Peter alles zu WebBluetooth, WebUSB und WebNFC!

nicodev
Project
DEC 2021

[md.edit]

nico-martin/markdown-editor67

A web based markdown editor that uses modern progressive web app features to provide a great, cross-platform editing experience. The main goal of this project is to showcase the File System Access API. This API allows a web app to access local files. That means files can be opened and saved directly in the browser.

Blogpost
MAY 2020

Share Target API

dev.to

I think it's fair to say that sharing is one of the most time-saving interactions on our phones. So I was more than thrilled when I've heard about the Share Target API.

Blogpost
APR 2020

Creating Scheduled Push Notifications

css-tricks.com

Scheduled is the key word there — that’s a fairly new thing! When a push notification is scheduled (i.e. "Take your pill" or "You've got a flight in 3 hours") that means it can be...

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