For people who noticed how much of it they are renting
Somebody else can switch it off. Find out who.
This is not the path where you save money. Sometimes running it yourself costs more — in power, in parts, in your own attention. What you get instead is knowing who holds each thing you depend on, and what happens the day they stop holding it — and then the hardware, the skills and the people to do something about it.
7 classes in a curated order, filmed, with exercises and the written curriculum behind them — and the standups every week, so the build always has a room. At $500 a month you are at the bench for every one of them, as often as they run. The Make & Do hour is Mon–Thu at 9:00 Pacific.
You're already halfway there — finish the security half
$400 suggested / $300 floor
Own your stack — all Independence + Defender classes
$750 suggested / $500 floor
Add on anytime — keeps your current path. One-time purchase, classes yours to keep.
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 what you write down in Keep It Running, 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 Keep It Running 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 Keep It Running 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. In Keep It Running you write the itemized bill for what your own system costs, 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 are actually buying
A seat in the room, four days a week
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.
The Make & Do hour
9:00 Pacific, Monday to Thursday, led by neek. It is the solarpunk standup and it is the spine of this path: you turn up with the parts on the desk and you leave with the thing further along than it was. Come Monday with a plan, come Thursday with a question, come every day for a month while you get one node onto its own power.
Every class, as often as you want
$250 a month is the whole shelf on your own clock — every class here filmed, exercises, the written curriculum, and the standups every week. At $500 you are also at the bench: all 7 classes are live and they run again, so you take Build a Cyberdeck once to see how it goes together and once more with the parts you actually chose. The month you need the network class twice, you take it twice.
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.
Join us — $250 a month Or $500 a month to be at the bench as well. Billed monthly, cancel any time. Or take one class on its own.
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, Keep It Running, 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 eight 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
Eight 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. The date beside each one is the next time it runs.
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1
Intro to Open Source Software
Next sessionSat 12 Sep
- locate an open source replacement for software you pay for
- migrate your work off a subscription without losing it
- 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
- characterise what a tool costs you beyond its price
- integrate a change into a project you do not control
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2
Control AI Spending
Next sessionSat 12 Sep
- run an open model locally
- produce an inventory of what you pay for and what it holds
- produce an itemised bill for what your running system costs
- 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
- verify a spending limit declines the charge you did not intend
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.
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3
Solarpunk Automation
- locate a substitute part when the named one is unavailable
- name an audience and its success criterion
- repurpose a retired device into a working server
- configure a node to run on power you generate
- 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
- reproduce your environment on a machine that is not yours
- 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
- measure what a community loses when a channel goes down
- verify a community system survives a cut you did not choose
- design a community information system that survives losing the internet
- reconcile community ownership with somebody having to maintain it
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4
Build a Cyberdeck
- 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
- repurpose a retired device into a working server
- produce a parts list you can actually source
- reproduce your environment on a machine that is not yours
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5
Hosting Open-Source Models
Next sessionMon 21 Sep
- run an open model locally
- configure an open model endpoint behind a provider interface
- reproduce your environment on a machine that is not yours
- classify models by fit for a workload
- justify a hosting choice by cost per outcome
- originate a replacement stack when the economics change
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6
Consumer Device Rescue and Defense
Next sessionWed 28 Oct
- follow a device hardening checklist
- locate a substitute part when the named one is unavailable
- repurpose a retired device into a working server
- migrate your work off a subscription without losing it
- design a household security posture for people who did not choose it
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
Home Network Defense
Next sessionWed 30 Sep
- follow a device hardening checklist
- locate every device on your own network
- produce a threat model for your own situation
- design a household security posture for people who did not choose it
- reconcile security with what people will actually do
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
🛡️ The Defender
If the goal is defending yourself and the people who rely on you — scams, identity, an incident already in progress — that is a different job from owning your stack. Two classes here are also there (Consumer Device Rescue and Defense, Home Network Defense), but that path continues into opsec, blue team and red team rather than into hardware.
See The Defender →🛡️ The Defender
If your main concern is security rather than ownership, the Defender package focuses on threat modeling, device rescue, and identity defense. It shares Home Network Defense and Device Rescue with this path. Available as an add-on to any path you are already on.
See The Defender →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 seven.
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 Intro to Open Source Software, Saturday 12 September.