Field notes
Running assistants on your own box.
What actually breaks, what it actually costs, and how to give it hands. New notes occasionally — there's an RSS feed.
Posts
How to Keep Your Self-Hosted AI Assistant's Bill in Single Digits
Run a private AI assistant for a few dollars a month: route cheap tasks to cheap models and save the expensive one for when it matters.
7 Ways a Self-Hosted AI Assistant Breaks (and How to Fix Each)
The seven failure modes that take down a self-hosted AI assistant — and the shape of the fix for each, from real production boxes.
Give Your Self-Hosted AI Assistant Hands: Files, Calendar, and Email over MCP
A chatbot answers questions. An assistant does things. How to wire a self-hosted AI assistant to your files, calendar, and email safely with MCP.