Local first. Cloud when it earns its keep.
Six chapters in two parts. The first four build on each other and set you up with a private, working AI on your own computer. The last two are about living alongside the AI you didn't choose. If you only read one, make it Chapter 02 — everything in Part One gets easier once you have a private model running on your own machine.
Getting a private AI running
Private RAG
"RAG" sounds technical; the idea is simple. Let an AI search through your own files to answer your questions — without those files ever leaving your computer.
Read the guide → Chapter 02 · 8 min readLocal Models with Ollama
The foundation for everything else here: how to install a free tool called Ollama and run a genuinely useful AI model entirely on your own computer.
Read the guide → Chapter 03 · 5 min readOffline Private Sessions
How to disconnect from the internet entirely and still have a capable AI conversation — ideal for anything personal, medical, financial, or simply private.
Read the guide → Chapter 04 · 7 min readReducing Token Usage
What a "token" is, why it matters to your wallet, and the habits that keep cloud AI costs at or near zero without giving up its benefits.
Read the guide →Staying in charge of the rest
These two don't require the first four, and they matter whether or not you ever run a model yourself. For defending against AI used against you — cloned voices, impersonation, and the scams built on both — see Staying Safe.
Turning Off the AI You Didn't Ask For
Your browser, your computer, and your phone have all added AI features without asking. How to find those switches, decide which ones you want, and turn off the rest.
Read the guide → Chapter 06 · 8 min readChecking If a Tool Is Really Private
Four tests, from ten seconds to ten minutes, that let you check a privacy claim yourself instead of taking a company's word for it.
Read the guide →How to read these guides
Each chapter is written to be read in one sitting, at a kitchen table, with no assumed background. Technical terms are explained the first time they appear, and marked with a small tag like this:
term explained
Where a guide suggests trying something on your own computer, it says so clearly in a highlighted box — nothing is sprung on you.
The philosophy in one paragraph
Most of what people want from AI day-to-day — organizing thoughts, drafting a letter, searching their own notes, thinking through a decision — can be done entirely on a personal computer, for free, with total privacy. Save the large, cloud-based "frontier" models for the handful of tasks that truly need extra horsepower, and use them on purpose, not by default.