For people who noticed how much of it they are renting
Own your infrastructure. Stop renting your safety.
7 classes from home network defense to hosting your own models. Includes the full Defender security package.
$750 suggested. One-time purchase — all 7 classes, recordings, tools, and curriculum. Includes the full Defender package ($400 value).
Next time each one runs
The thing this path actually teaches
What it costs, and who can withdraw it
Tick what you pay for and type your own prices; every number here is editable. The money is the easy column. The other one is who can withdraw each thing without asking you, because a dependency you have not named is one you cannot plan around. Your inputs stay in this browser: the ledger adds up here, and the total is saved in it.
An account suspension takes the photos with it, and an appeal form is the only door back in.
Addressed by Intro to Open Source Software and Solarpunk Automation.The model your workflow was tuned around can be retired on a blog post's notice, and the replacement behaves differently.
Addressed by Control AI Spending and Hosting Open-Source Models.This is the one you cannot afford to be locked out of, which is exactly why you export it before you need to.
Addressed by Intro to Open Source Software and Consumer Device Rescue and Defense.A backup you cannot restore without their client is not a backup, it is a tenancy.
Addressed by Solarpunk Automation and Build a Cyberdeck.The catalog is licensed rather than bought; records leave the shelf without anyone telling you.
Addressed by Intro to Open Source Software.A discontinued product takes the data unless you can read the file without the program that wrote it.
Addressed by Intro to Open Source Software.Every other account resets through this one, so losing it quietly loses all the rest as well.
Addressed by Intro to Open Source Software and Solarpunk Automation.A failed card is an outage and a policy change is an eviction, both on their timetable rather than yours.
Addressed by Solarpunk Automation and Hosting Open-Source Models.A price change is not a negotiation; you get an email telling you what it is now.
Addressed by Intro to Open Source Software.The honest arithmetic. Replacing all of that with things you run does not zero the bill — it moves it to electricity, storage, a spare device and the hours you spend on it. The itemized bill for what your own system costs is part of the work, and you price what each tool takes from you beyond its price, so the comparison is like for like instead of wishful. Some of these you will replace. Some you will keep and simply stop being surprised by. The difference is that you chose.
What you end up able to run
The things you stop having to ask permission for
Every line is something you will be able to do without a vendor in the way — enumerate every device on your own network, keep a machine alive past the day its maker gave up on it, answer a question on a model running in your own room. Put in the hours you have on the bench and see how far up they get you.
Spend it. Each class costs what it really takes.
- follow a device hardening checklist
- locate a substitute part when the named one is unavailable
- locate an open source replacement for software you pay for
- run a program someone else wrote and read its error
- assemble a working computer from parts you chose
- locate every device on your own network
- name an audience and its success criterion
- repurpose a retired device into a working server
- run an open model locally
- configure a node to run on power you generate
- configure an open model endpoint behind a provider interface
- migrate your work off a subscription without losing it
- operate a mesh network that carries messages without infrastructure
- operate a single board computer as an always on service
- produce a parts list you can actually source
- produce a threat model for your own situation
- produce an account of what you depend on and who can revoke it
- produce an inventory of what you pay for and what it holds
3 more on this rung
- produce an itemised bill for what your running system costs
- reproduce your environment on a machine that is not yours
- segment text into tokens and cost it
- characterise what a tool costs you beyond its price
- characterise what one user costs you to serve
- classify each recurring AI cost by keep downgrade or replace
- classify models by fit for a workload
- classify salvaged power cells by whether they are safe to reuse
- classify your channels by what removes them
- generalise a node build into your communitys system
- parameterise a service so it is reachable by name
- justify a hosting choice by cost per outcome
- measure what a community loses when a channel goes down
- verify a community system survives a cut you did not choose
- verify a spending limit declines the charge you did not intend
- design a community information system that survives losing the internet
- design a household security posture for people who did not choose it
- integrate a change into a project you do not control
- reconcile community ownership with somebody having to maintain it
- reconcile security with what people will actually do
- originate a replacement stack when the economics change
5 of these 7 classes fit in 30 hours, and they open 34 of the 39 things above, as far up as set the terms.
That opens the recordings, the exercises and the written curriculum on this path, and the standups every week. $500 a month adds a seat in every class on it that runs this month.
What a point is. Ten hours of your time — the recordings you watch, the exercises you work through, and the session itself. Move either slider, or pick the classes yourself and see what the hours come to.
What you are actually buying
Access to every class in the package
You come to the classes. You build the thing with people who are building theirs, at the same bench, at the same time. Then you come back and do it again — that is not a workaround for anything, that is the method. Nobody assembles a working machine on the first pass.
All 7 classes, recordings and live
One purchase gets you every class in the package — recordings, exercises, written curriculum, and tools. Includes the full Defender security package. Classes run again, so you take Build a Cyberdeck once to see how it goes together and once more with the parts you actually chose.
What you end up holding
A computer you assembled from parts you chose. A retired device turned into a working server. A node that runs on power you generate. A model answering on your own hardware. This path is physical in a way most of the school is not, and the hardware is on you to buy.
What you work on between sessions
exercises, and the tools we use in class. The cyberdeck companion walks a build step by step and remembers where you stopped; the cyberpony reference is the wiring and the power maths for a solar node; the six roses reference is the hardening checklist you work down a device with. You get them when you enroll.
Get Independence — $750 Includes Defender. One-time purchase, yours to keep.
Before your first Tuesday
What you need on the bench
Most of this path is physical, so the hardware is yours to buy. Here is the whole list, in the order it comes up. You start with none of it.
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Day one — you already have this
A laptop and your own bills
- Any laptop from the last decade. No terminal, no prior setup, nothing installed before you arrive.
- The list of what you pay for each month. The one you just ticked above is a fine start.
Enough for Intro to Open Source Software, Control AI Spending, and every Make & Do hour.
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Week two — already in a drawer
The device you were going to throw out
- A phone, tablet or laptop the vendor stopped supporting. It becomes a working server, and it is the cheapest hardware on this page because you own it already.
- Your own router, and the password for it. That plus an evening is Home Network Defense.
Consumer Device Rescue and Defense, Home Network Defense, and the server half of Solarpunk Automation.
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When you get to the bench classes
Parts, bought once
- For the deck: a single-board computer, a storage card, a keyboard, a screen and a battery. A soldering iron, which you can borrow before you buy one.
- For the node: a small solar panel, a battery to hold what it makes, and a radio for the mesh.
- For a model of your own: a machine with memory to spare — often the deck you just built.
Build a Cyberdeck, Solarpunk Automation, Hosting Open-Source Models.
Bring the list before you buy any of it. The first thing this path teaches is finding the substitute part when the one in the guide is out of stock or three times the price — so come to the Make & Do hour with what you were about to order and someone who has built one will go through it with you. This is what people actually have on the desk, not a bill of materials.
Where you start
Finding the open source replacement for something you pay for, and finding the substitute part when the one in the guide is out of stock. Both on your first Tuesday, both with somebody in the room who has done it.
Where you get to
Justifying a hosting choice by what it costs you per outcome, and knowing your system broke before a user tells you. That is engineering judgment, and it is the top of this path.
What it asks of you
About 10.1 hours of recorded sessions of work across the seven classes, and you can spread it over as many months as you want. Come to the hour Mon–Thu and you are most of the way there without ever setting aside an evening.
The order, and it is an argument
Seven classes, each standing on the one before
You start by finding out what you are paying for, then what it would take to leave, then you build the thing you would leave to. The inventory comes first on purpose: you cannot replace a dependency you have not written down. Take them in this order the first time through, and in whatever order you like after that — every one of them comes around again, and the note under each one is why it sits where it does.
- 1
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2
The most widely useful hour on this path. Knowing what a token costs is load-bearing whether you are building the system, approving the invoice or getting off the invoice entirely — which is why builders, executives and founders sit in this one alongside you.
- 3
- 4
- 5
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6
Keeping a device alive past the day its vendor stopped supporting it is a sovereignty claim before it is a security one. The vendor decided the machine was finished. It is your machine.
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7
Knowing every device on your own network is the same claim in the other direction. You cannot own what you cannot enumerate.
Two doors down the hall
Two neighbors, in case one of them is more your job
And if one class is the thing you came for, any class on this page can be taken on its own. Control AI Spending is a good door in: you leave it able to cost a workload before you run it. Then it is there again next time it runs, and so are the other six.
It starts on a Monday at 9:00
Own your tools
Come to the Make & Do hour with a list of what you pay for. Come back Tuesday. Keep coming, because that is the whole trick — the machine gets built by the people who kept turning up. By the end that list is an itemized account of every dependency you have, most of the entries say your own name, and the ones that do not are there because you decided they were worth it.
The next class on this path is Home Network Defense, Wednesday 30 September.