Prodigy: Building Private, Custom AI Systems with Full Control

Prodigy is a powerful, downloadable developer tool and library designed for building custom AI systems with a strong focus on privacy, customization, and real-world deployment. Built by Explosion, Prodigy enables developers to create, review, and train machine learning models using human-in-the-loop workflows, all running entirely on the user's own machines—ensuring no data leaves the user's servers. It integrates seamlessly with spaCy and supports Hugging Face models and major LLM API providers, making it ideal for tasks such as information extraction, language model training, computer vision, audio & video classification, and prompt engineering. With pre-built workflows, customizable recipes, and support for collaborative annotation, Prodigy empowers teams in industries including banking, healthcare, media, legal, and research to develop private, transparent AI pipelines. The tool is tailored for developers with basic Python and command-line experience, offering extensive customization through Python, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Key Features:

• Local Deployment: Runs entirely on user machines—no data leaves the server.
• Privacy-First: Ensures full data control and ownership.
• Integration: Works with spaCy, Hugging Face models, and major LLM API providers.
• Customizable Workflows: Use pre-built recipes or create custom workflows with Python.
• Annotation & Review: Browser-based app for collaborative data collection and annotation.
• Multi-Modal Support: Handles text, images, audio, video, and PDFs with OCR.
• Real-Time Collaboration: Enables team annotation and prompt engineering.
• Structured Data Export: Export data in standard formats to avoid vendor lock-in.
• Active Learning: Optimizes annotation efficiency with intelligent data selection.
• Industry Applications: Used in banking, healthcare, media, legal, and research sectors.

Pricing: Prodigy offers a lifetime license with a one-time payment, providing flexible options for individuals and teams. Research institutions can apply for a free interim license.

Conclusion: Prodigy stands out as a developer-centric AI tool that combines powerful functionality with a strong commitment to privacy and control. It's an ideal solution for teams looking to build custom, high-performance AI systems without compromising on data security or flexibility.