Sometimes I stumble across a project that feels right at home in Blue95. Felix Rieseberg’s Clippy is exactly that: a local LLM assistant wrapped in the aesthetic of everyone’s favorite (read: despised) paperclip. It’s charming, it’s nostalgic, and it’s surprisingly useful — three qualities I hold dear.

However, it’s more than just a novelty. It’s a reminder of how joyful computing can be when it’s personal, local, and just a little bit odd. It feels like a glimpse into a different path we could have taken — one where the future of computing stayed weird, creative, and people-driven, instead of being handed over to platforms that measure our lives in metrics and monetize our attention.

Maybe it’s a small window into the future we lost. Or maybe it’s just a paperclip.