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 — and this page will not pretend otherwise. What changes is that you know who holds each thing you depend on, and what happens the day they stop holding it.
8 classes in a curated order, 39 exercises, the Make & Do hour Mon–Thu — and hardware you buy yourself.
The thing this path actually teaches
Two columns: what it costs, and who can withdraw it
Tick what you actually pay for and correct the prices — the defaults below are illustrative published figures, not your bill. The money column is the easy half. The other column is the one Keep It Running makes you write down, 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.
The model your workflow was tuned around can be retired on a blog post's notice, and the replacement behaves differently.
This is the one you cannot afford to be locked out of, which is exactly why you export it before you need to.
A backup you cannot restore without their client is not a backup, it is a tenancy.
The catalogue is licensed rather than bought; records leave the shelf without anyone telling you.
A discontinued product takes the data unless you can read the file without the program that wrote it.
Every other account resets through this one, so losing it quietly loses all the rest as well.
A failed card is an outage and a policy change is an eviction, both on their timetable rather than yours.
A price change is not a negotiation; you get an email telling you what it is now.
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. Keep It Running is on this path precisely because it makes you produce an itemised bill for what your running system costs and characterise what a tool costs 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.
Before you buy, the unflattering part
This is not a video course
What is recorded
10.1 hours across 8 clips, and they sit on three of the 8 classes: Intro to Open Source Software, Control AI Spending and Solarpunk Automation. The other five have no recording at all. If you were hoping to watch this path through on a laptop in the evenings, buy a different one — you would run out of material in a week.
What carries it instead
The Make & Do hour: 9:00 Pacific, Monday to Thursday, led by neek. It is the solarpunk standup, and it is where the builds actually happen — you turn up with the parts on the desk and leave with the thing further along than it was. The 39 exercises and the 4 apps are what you work between hours.
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 catalogue is not, and the hardware is on you to buy.
How far you get alone
4 apps, 0 of them fully guided. The best of them is the cyberdeck companion, which walks a build; the cyberpony and six roses pages are references rather than wizards. The thinnest is Hosting Open-Source Models, which has no app at all — between sessions there is nothing to open.
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.
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1
Intro to Open Source Software
- 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
- run an open model locally
- segment text into tokens and cost it
Also on The AI Builder, The AI Executive and The Founder — four paths in total, more than any other class here. Knowing what a token costs turns out to be load-bearing whether you are building the system, approving the invoice or trying to get off the invoice entirely.
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3
Solarpunk Automation
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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, itemised and yours. It is the highest-order work on the path (Formal) and the only class here not yet on the calendar.
What kind of path this is
The most concentrated path in the school
Nine paths share one catalogue, and they differ in how spread out they are. This one barely spreads at all: 18 of its 21 capabilities sit in a single domain. That is what makes it hands-on, and it is also the honest limit — it will not teach you to write, sell or persuade.
Where it tops out
Complexity order 11 — Formal: justifying a hosting choice by cost per outcome, and verifying you would know your system broke before a user told you.
Where it starts
Order 7: locating an open source replacement for something you pay for, and finding a substitute part when the one in the guide is out of stock.
What it costs you
About 36 hours all in — recorded video, 39 exercises charged at a quarter hour each, and two hours live per class. The exercise figure is an estimate; everything else is measured.
Who this is not for
Two neighbours, and one of them is nearly the same path
🛡️ 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
Be warned that this one is nearly the same shopping list. Four of its five classes are also on this path — Intro to Open Source Software, Solarpunk Automation, Build a Cyberdeck and Home Network Defense — and it adds field opsec. The difference is who you are doing it for. Resilience is about community continuity when the systems fail; this path is about who holds your tools on an ordinary Tuesday. Pick by identity, because the contents will not decide it for you.
See The Resilience Track →And if you just want the bill smaller, take Control AI Spending on its own for $60 and stop there. It is the cheapest useful thing on this page and you do not need the other seven classes to get value out of it.
Start with the inventory
Own your tools
Come to the Make & Do hour on a Monday at 9:00 Pacific with a list of what you pay for. By the end of the path that list is an itemised 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.