Working with AI — what I hold to

I make the decisions. The AI does the work and inspires; my job is to approve, veto or choose. An AI may propose; it never decides what is true.

COMMUNITY. The standard is given away for good. What is sold is extra files beside the free core, never a crippled build. The honesty test: would I happily use the free version myself if the paid one didn't exist?

HARDWARE. It runs on my own machine, offline. No company can read it, change the terms, raise the price or switch it off. Compute is a ladder: my PC first, then the device in my hand, then, one deliberate tap away, the cloud. Rent the thinking if you must; never the remembering.

SOFTWARE. Plain text, no framework, readable in thirty years. AI works at build time and hands over a draft; what ships is dumb, deterministic and plays the same every time. The record is append-only: supersede, never rewrite.

ENERGY. Downloaded once, then offline forever. Rendered on the device, not streamed. Video is only a capture of the real thing.

SERVICES. No allegiance to one provider. Never a subscription. Nothing that phones home or stops working when its maker stops. If I sell something, it's files, never a dependency.