the stack

The actual tools I run to own my life instead of renting it. Tagged honestly: some live, some building, some still on the list. I use frontier tools where they win, I just arrange them so no single company owns me. This is the five pillars, made concrete.

livebuildingwant· free = open-source, £0

MIND · own your intelligence

Obsidian + Vault 27FREEsecond brain, plain local markdownlive

Claude Code + Overseermy daily agent layer, frontier by choicelive

Ollama + LM StudioFREErun open models on my own machinebuilding

GLM-5.2 / QwenFREEtop open-weight model, API now, fully local laterwant

Mac Studio 128GBthe GPU box for running big models offlinewant

DATA · own your identity and bytes

Protonmail, calendar, drive, VPN in onelive

BraveFREEChromium, so G Suite still works, with tracker blockbuilding

Phi BrowserFREEopen-source Chromium, local-first, runs local models and lets my own agents drive itbuilding

Umbrel Homethe home server everything below runs onwant

ImmichFREEphotos, replaces Google Photoswant

NextcloudFREEfiles, replaces iCloud and Drivewant

VaultwardenFREEpasswords, self-hosted Bitwardenwant

Pi-holeFREEnetwork-wide ad and tracker blockwant

Mullvadanonymous VPN, pays in cash or BTCwant

GrapheneOSFREEde-Googled Pixel, the hardcore movewant

MONEY · own your capital

Ledgerhardware wallet, coins in self-custodylive

Krakendollar-cost average, then withdraw to cold storagelive

Bitcoin node + SparrowFREEverify my own coins, no trusted third partywant

BODY · own your biology

Garminwearable that owns the raw datalive

Stravatraining log and segmentslive

Own-your-data exportFREEFIT files pulled into my own storebuilding

Biomarker panelsbloods via Medichecks or Thriva, held myselfbuilding

HOME · own your base

Home AssistantFREElocal smart-home brain, no cloudwant

EcoFlow balcony solarenergy, the renter-friendly startwant

Solar + Powerwallfull setup, the long horizon (my dad runs it)want

what it costs · levels of sovereignty by price

Almost all the software is free. You stop renting clouds and buy one box, once. £0 gets you started, around £550 gets you a genuinely sovereign setup, and everything above is optional depth.

£0software swaps

Brave instead of Chrome, Proton free tier, small local models on the laptop I already own, withdraw BTC to my Ledger, export my Garmin data.

Chrome tracking and a chunk of cloud reliance. A good way there, for nothing.

£550the home server

one Umbrel Home box, then free: Immich, Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, Pi-hole, a Bitcoin node, and Home Assistant.

iCloud + Google Photos + Drive + 1Password + a hosted node. One purchase, £1/month power. This is the good standard.

£1-1.5kprivacy + home layer

a GrapheneOS Pixel, Mullvad VPN, an EcoFlow balcony solar starter, and a couple of biomarker panels.

Google on your phone, your ISP watching you, a slice of the energy bill.

£3-3.5kthe local-AI box

a Mac Studio M4 Max 128GB to run big models fully local and offline.

optional. GLM-class models run by API for pennies until privacy or offline matters. Not needed to start.

£5k+full home tier

proper roof solar and a Tesla Powerwall.

the grid, mostly. The aspirational end, for when you own the roof.

← home · the five pillars · now