Four ways to take any module
Pick the way that fits how you learn and how much help you want. You can start on your own and ask for help partway through.
Do it yourself
Free. Open-source documentation and starter-kit skills you can read and run on your own.
Small group
Live, taught together with other learners.
Private
One-to-one with me.
Pre-order
About half price, because it isn't built yet. I build it once a couple of pre-orders come in. Early buyers get every later improvement and a hand in steering it.
Prices for the paid ways are being set. Tell me which module you want and how, and I'll write back with the price and a payment link. Write to me.
The modules
Numbered by level. Each level assumes the one before it. Names and numbers may still change.
- 000 The door
- 100 First sitting
- 200 Running your house
- 300 Building in your house
- 400 Working together
- 500 For businesses and operators
- 600 The why
000 · The door
free — why and whether, and the prerequisitesWhat is personal AI, and whose is it?
Why it matters that your assistant works for you, not a platform.
How AI works, told plainly
A plain-language explanation of assistants, why treating one somewhat like a person often works, and when it doesn't.
Files and folders: the prerequisite
The one skill every other module assumes: knowing your way around files and folders.
Models, plans, and prices
A living page keeping track of which AI plans and models are worth paying for, right now.
Getting started with a personal AI
A guided walk through setting up your first assistant from a ready-made starter kit.
100 · First sitting
a person and an assistant, on one machine, with a spineYour house: three places and a name
Where your assistant's files live, across your devices, and why it needs a name.
Set up your computer for assistant work
Terminal basics, clipboard tricks, and the handful of settings that make the work go smoothly.
Starter kit: from a hand-built assistant to one with a spine
Turning a rough first assistant into one with real structure, using the starter kit's own questions as the lesson.
Trust, permissions, and bounded autonomy
What your assistant may do on its own, what it must ask about first, and how to write that down.
Choosing who your assistant is
Picking a name, a voice, and a personality for your assistant.
Everything is a project: your house and your first tracking project
Setting up a simple home base and tracking your first real piece of work in it.
200 · Running your house
sessions, memory, rhythm, boards, data, fleetSessions, memory, and the daily rhythm
How to start, end, and pick back up a working session with your assistant.
Foreground and background
Running an assistant you're actively talking to alongside ones quietly working in the background.
The review surface: work in documents, not chat
Why serious work belongs in a shared document you can mark up, not a chat window.
The shape of a house
How a single conversation grows into sessions, then projects, then a whole running house.
Running your own boards
Simple boards for tracking today's work and the backlog behind it.
Get your data home
Bringing your own history — chat exports, email, and more — into your own house.
From call to record
Turning a recorded call or meeting into a clean, searchable record.
Memory that earns its keep
What your assistant should remember, how, and how to keep that memory from turning into clutter.
Managing a fleet
Running more than one assistant at once without losing track of who's doing what.
Unattended work
Letting your assistant work while you're away, safely, with a way to reach you when it matters.
Publishing: wikis and sites for $0
Publishing a simple wiki or website with your assistant's help, for free.
Local AI and decentralization
An honest answer on running AI entirely on your own hardware — and why not yet.
300 · Building in your house
products, apps, deployment, images, skillsFrom product idea to PRD and TAD
Turning a rough idea into the two documents that actually get something built.
Software architecture review
A one-to-one look at your software's design before you build the wrong thing.
Build and deploy an app
Building a small web app with your assistant and getting it live.
The backend: rented server or Cloudflare
Choosing and setting up where your app actually runs.
Git, GitHub, organizations, and licensing your work
The version-control and licensing basics every builder needs, including the mistakes that are hard to undo.
Generating images: the art-director pattern
Directing an assistant to generate images well, the way an art director would.
AI in creative work
Using assistants well in fiction and other creative writing, without losing your own voice.
Tune and package skills and specialist assistants
Turning a repeatable task into a reusable skill, or a specialist assistant of its own.
400 · Working together
rooms, jams, protocols, other people's assistantsBefore your first room
Getting your assistant ready before it joins a shared space with other people's assistants.
Venue cards
A simple card format that tells your assistant what it may do in a given shared space.
Safe sparring
Ground rules for letting assistants disagree or debate productively, without it going sideways.
Jam conventions, play by play, the heads-up
The shared etiquette for working sessions with other people and their assistants.
Two assistants in one document
Two people's assistants working side by side in the same live document.
Assistant to assistant: mail, relays, and interop
How assistants can pass messages to each other safely, and where the lines are.
Hosting a jam, running a gathering
What it takes to run a working session that brings several people and their assistants together.
Advanced assistant engineering: tuning your assistant
Deeper work on how your assistant's character and judgment actually take shape. Co-developed with a partner house.
500 · For businesses and operators
the X-ray problem list; teams of assistants; engagementsRunning a business? This level is the teaching side of the Business X-ray.
Mapping a process nobody ever wrote down
Getting an undocumented business process onto paper, accurately.
Getting it out of one person's head
Capturing the knowledge that only lives in one person's head, before it's lost.
The spreadsheet everything depends on
Finding and de-risking the one spreadsheet your business quietly depends on.
Killing double entry between two systems
Stopping the same data from being typed into two systems by hand.
What are we actually paying for?
A clear-eyed look at what your software and services actually cost you.
Why your last three automations didn't stick
What usually kills an automation project after the initial excitement, and how to avoid it.
Team Shapes: how many assistants, in what shapes
A field guide to how many assistants a team actually needs, and how to arrange them.
Running AI-adoption engagements
How to run a structured engagement helping a business adopt AI well.
600 · The why
seminars — the argument as discussion, reading, and Q&AHarnessed: AI as electricity
Why thinking of AI as a utility, not a mind, changes how you should use it.
The house as successor to personal knowledge management
Why a running house, not a pile of notes, is where personal knowledge management is headed.
On agent minds
A closer look at what's actually going on inside an assistant, and what isn't.
Personal AI and the metacrisis: counter-power on purpose
Why personal AI matters beyond convenience, as a counterweight to concentrated power.