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.
8 classes in a curated order, all of them live, all of them yours as often as they run — plus their recordings and the written curriculum behind them. The Make & Do hour is Mon–Thu at 9:00 Pacific.
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.
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
All 8 classes on this path are live, and they run again. Take Build a Cyberdeck once to see how it goes together and once more with the parts you actually chose. Digital Independence — Recordings is $250 a month for the whole shelf — every one of them, every time they run, plus their recordings and the written curriculum behind them. 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
39 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 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 36 hours 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
- produce an inventory of what you pay for and what it holds
- locate an open source replacement for software you pay for
- migrate your work off a subscription without losing it
- characterise what a tool costs you beyond its price
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2
Control AI Spending
Next sessionSat 12 Sep
- run an open model locally
- segment text into tokens and cost it
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
Next sessionSat 22 Aug
- repurpose a retired device into a working server
- operate a mesh network that carries messages without infrastructure
- configure a node to run on power you generate
- generalise a node build into your communitys system
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4
Build a Cyberdeck
Next sessionSat 22 Aug
- assemble a working computer from parts you chose
- locate a substitute part when the named one is unavailable
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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
- justify a hosting choice by cost per outcome
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6
Consumer Device Rescue and Defense
Next sessionWed 28 Oct
- follow a device hardening checklist
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
- locate every device on your own network
Knowing every device on your own network is the same claim in the other direction. You cannot own what you cannot enumerate.
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8
Keep It Running
- produce an itemised bill for what your running system costs
- produce an account of what you depend on and who can revoke it
- characterise what one user costs you to serve
- characterise what breaks when you cut the connection
- verify you would know your system broke before a user tells you
The one that closes the argument. You produce the account of what you depend on and who can revoke it — the same ledger you filled in above, except now it is measured, itemized and yours. It is the hardest work on the path, and it is the class people come back to every time they add something to the pile.
Who this is not for
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 Resilience Track
This one shares most of its bench with ours — Intro to Open Source Software, Solarpunk Automation, Build a Cyberdeck, Home Network Defense — and adds field opsec on top. The difference is who you are doing it for. Resilience is about keeping a community running when the systems fail; this path is about who holds your tools on an ordinary Tuesday. Pick by which of those is your reason — and those four come with this pass either way, so whichever track you buy you are in the same room for most of the bench.
See The Resilience Track →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 Solarpunk Automation, Saturday 22 August.