## The Problem

While preparing for the CEH Practical exam, I found that EC-Council's official labs use ShellGPT — an AI terminal assistant — as part of the hacking workflow. The catch? It requires paid OpenAI API keys.

As someone building their cybersecurity career from scratch, paying for API credits on top of exam fees wasn't ideal. So I decided to build my own version.

## The Solution

A fully local AI assistant, running entirely on my laptop, accessible from my Kali Linux attack box — with zero ongoing cost.

## The Architecture

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## What It Does

From my Kali terminal I can now: - Ask security questions in plain English - Generate penetration testing commands instantly - Write exploit scripts on demand - Maintain context across an entire pentest session

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## The Full Setup Guide

Rather than repeat everything here, I've documented the complete step-by-step guide on GitHub — covering WSL2 setup, Ollama installation, ShellGPT configuration, VMware Kali setup, and connecting everything together.

🔗 https://github.com/amirinfosec/ai-powered-pentest-lab

## Who This Is For

- CEH Practical candidates - Cybersecurity students on a budget - Anyone wanting a professional pentest lab without cloud costs

Follow along as I document the journey.