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#setup

26 articles

Step-by-step installation guides for the sovereign AI stack. Tested on NVIDIA DGX Spark.

Self-Hosted AI: Start Here

Self-Hosted AI: Start Here

The honest decision tree for taking a local LLM stack seriously. Hardware tradeoffs I actually made, the inference engine I picked and why, the parts that hurt the most after I started, and the reading path through the rest of this blog.

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Honest minute-by-minute log of building a friend's sovereign-AI workstation from a stock Lenovo with Windows to a fully self-hosted KI-stack with custom dashboard, MCP-routed RAG, and bidirectional cross-tailnet sharing. With the mistakes.
lenovoblackwellrtx-5080ubuntuollamasovereign-aiengineering-honesty

24 Hours Setting Up a Lenovo Legion Pro 7 Gen 10 As a Sovereign-AI Companion Box

Honest minute-by-minute log of building a friend's sovereign-AI workstation from a stock Lenovo with Windows to a fully self-hosted KI-stack with custom dashboard, MCP-routed RAG, and bidirectional cross-tailnet sharing. With the mistakes.

Replace cloud AI coding assistants with opencode, a provider-agnostic Node CLI plus Electron desktop app. Points at any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, ships in three frontends. Includes the 2026-05-13 correction on the auto-title-generator Mistral BadRequest gotcha and the JSON-config-only setup syntax.
opencodeqwenagentsmistral

opencode Setup: Self-Hosted AI Coding Assistant on ARM64

Replace cloud AI coding assistants with opencode, a provider-agnostic Node CLI plus Electron desktop app. Points at any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, ships in three frontends. Includes the 2026-05-13 correction on the auto-title-generator Mistral BadRequest gotcha and the JSON-config-only setup syntax.

Run your own Lightning node on an ARM64 Linux box. Five-minute Docker setup, channel opening, sub-wallets via NWC, and the gotchas that x86-only guides skip.
lightningnostr

Alby Hub on ARM64: Self-Hosted Lightning Node in Docker for DGX Spark and Other ARM Boxes

Run your own Lightning node on an ARM64 Linux box. Five-minute Docker setup, channel opening, sub-wallets via NWC, and the gotchas that x86-only guides skip.

Why the first Sovereign AI MCP server isn't worth installing yet, but will be once it hits 200 articles and adds specialized tools. An honest MVP/POC critique.
mcp

The Sovereign AI Blog MCP Is Mostly Redundant Today, And That Will Change

Why the first Sovereign AI MCP server isn't worth installing yet, but will be once it hits 200 articles and adds specialized tools. An honest MVP/POC critique.

Move your AI stack off cloud servers. This post shows how to migrate a production Sovereign AI blog and MCP server to a €163/year VPS, harden it, and run it with Docker and Caddy, complete with real configs and pitfalls.
mcp

Floki-VPS Setup for Sovereign AI Workloads

Move your AI stack off cloud servers. This post shows how to migrate a production Sovereign AI blog and MCP server to a €163/year VPS, harden it, and run it with Docker and Caddy, complete with real configs and pitfalls.

A practical guide to setting up a searchable, growing knowledge base using Markdown files, JSON indexing, and local LLMs, no vector stores required.
mcpmistralpodcast

Build a Self-Hosted Knowledge Base with Plain Text and LLMs

A practical guide to setting up a searchable, growing knowledge base using Markdown files, JSON indexing, and local LLMs, no vector stores required.

A hands-on guide to installing and configuring OpenClaw on NVIDIA DGX Spark, switching between cloud and local models, and wiring MCP servers.
mcpmistralopenclawsglang

OpenClaw Setup on DGX Spark for Sovereign AI Agents

A hands-on guide to installing and configuring OpenClaw on NVIDIA DGX Spark, switching between cloud and local models, and wiring MCP servers.

Learn how to run a self-hosted MCP server for your blog’s knowledge base, integrate it with OpenClaw and Vibe, and avoid the pitfalls I hit while migrating from cloud to Sovereign AI.
mcpopenclawsglangvibe

Sovereign MCP Server: Local Setup, Integration, and Hard Lessons

Learn how to run a self-hosted MCP server for your blog’s knowledge base, integrate it with OpenClaw and Vibe, and avoid the pitfalls I hit while migrating from cloud to Sovereign AI.

Built a self-hosted MCP, mirrored it to GitHub, listed it on Smithery, hit a perfect quality score before dinner. The exact patches, badges, and pitfalls. Plus an honest take on why a number on a dashboard is not a customer.
mcp

100/100 on Smithery in 4 Hours, and Why That Means Almost Nothing

Built a self-hosted MCP, mirrored it to GitHub, listed it on Smithery, hit a perfect quality score before dinner. The exact patches, badges, and pitfalls. Plus an honest take on why a number on a dashboard is not a customer.

A practical guide to running a full content pipeline, writing, generating images, and serving, on your own hardware with Astro, Mistral Small 4, and ComfyUI FLUX.
comfyuifluxmistral

Build a Self-Hosted AI Blog with Astro, Mistral, and ComfyUI on One Machine

A practical guide to running a full content pipeline, writing, generating images, and serving, on your own hardware with Astro, Mistral Small 4, and ComfyUI FLUX.

A hands-on guide to deploying a self-hosted AI blog with Docker, Astro, and MCP discovery, complete with working code, real-world gotchas, and monetization via Lightning and Nostr.
lightningmcpnostr

Sovereign Blog Setup: Self-Hosted AI Content Pipeline & Monetization

A hands-on guide to deploying a self-hosted AI blog with Docker, Astro, and MCP discovery, complete with working code, real-world gotchas, and monetization via Lightning and Nostr.

Run Mistral Small 4 119B on NVIDIA GB10 with SGLang nightly: exact flags, real benchmarks, every gotcha that costs a day
mistralsglang

Self-Host Mistral Small 4 with SGLang on NVIDIA DGX Spark (GB10): What Actually Works

Run Mistral Small 4 119B on NVIDIA GB10 with SGLang nightly: exact flags, real benchmarks, every gotcha that costs a day

Optimized workflow for running FLUX.1-schnell and Mistral sequentially on NVIDIA DGX Spark with 128GB unified memory
comfyuifluxmistralsglang

ComfyUI plus FLUX.1-schnell on DGX Spark: Per-Style Visual Vocabularies

Optimized workflow for running FLUX.1-schnell and Mistral sequentially on NVIDIA DGX Spark with 128GB unified memory

A practical guide to optimizing a self-hosted AI content pipeline with targeted scripts, grep-based validation, and precise flag handling.
mistral

Self-Hosted AI Pipeline (Part 1): Targeted Scripts, Hardware-Crashing Flags, and Why Grep Beats LLM

A practical guide to optimizing a self-hosted AI content pipeline with targeted scripts, grep-based validation, and precise flag handling.

Lessons learned from a failed LLM self-review experiment that broke our validation pipeline and how we fixed it with deterministic checks.
mistralsglang

Self-Hosted AI Content Pipeline: What Works and What Doesn’t

Lessons learned from a failed LLM self-review experiment that broke our validation pipeline and how we fixed it with deterministic checks.

A weekly automation pipeline that repairs, updates, and optimizes self-hosted blog articles in place using Mistral and SearXNG.

Automate Better Blog Posts: Self-Hosted Article Optimization That Actually Works

A weekly automation pipeline that repairs, updates, and optimizes self-hosted blog articles in place using Mistral and SearXNG.

Learn how to implement Value-4-Value payments in Feedbin using podcast:value tags and the Alby bounty for a zap button.
lightningnostrpodcast

Feedbin and Lightning V4V: Tipping RSS Authors Through Alby

Learn how to implement Value-4-Value payments in Feedbin using podcast:value tags and the Alby bounty for a zap button.

A detailed guide to deploying Gitea on ARM64 with Docker, SQLite, Tor access, and automated encrypted backups.
gitea

Gitea ARM64 Setup: Tor Hidden Service and Sovereign Dev Workflow

A detailed guide to deploying Gitea on ARM64 with Docker, SQLite, Tor access, and automated encrypted backups.

Deploy a privacy-respecting AI coding assistant with Mistral Small 4 and SearXNG using Docker on ARM64 hardware.
mistralopenclawopenhandssglang

OpenHands Setup with Mistral-via-SGLang: The Multi-Arch Container Recipe

Deploy a privacy-respecting AI coding assistant with Mistral Small 4 and SearXNG using Docker on ARM64 hardware.

Turn your Android device into a full terminal for your Sovereign AI Grid with Termux, Tailscale, and tmux for seamless remote access.

Android AI Terminal: SSH plus Termux plus tmux for the AI Stack from Your Phone

Turn your Android device into a full terminal for your Sovereign AI Grid with Termux, Tailscale, and tmux for seamless remote access.

Learn how to install Alby, receive your first Lightning payment, and become a Nostr power user with Zaps, all without trusting a bank or exchange.
lightningnostrpodcast

Alby Lightning Wallet: From Zero to Sovereign AI Tipper in 30 Minutes

Learn how to install Alby, receive your first Lightning payment, and become a Nostr power user with Zaps, all without trusting a bank or exchange.

Skip the cloud accounts. Use Alby’s NIP-07 signer to send Bitcoin zaps directly from your browser, no middlemen, no passwords, just your keypair and a Lightning wallet.
lightningnostr

Alby + Nostr: Send Lightning Zaps with Sovereign Identity

Skip the cloud accounts. Use Alby’s NIP-07 signer to send Bitcoin zaps directly from your browser, no middlemen, no passwords, just your keypair and a Lightning wallet.

Why Swiss precision matters for your Bitcoin self-custody stack: and how to set it up in under 30 minutes without trusting anyone
lightning

BitBox02: The Swiss-Made Hardware Wallet for Sovereign Bitcoin

Why Swiss precision matters for your Bitcoin self-custody stack: and how to set it up in under 30 minutes without trusting anyone

Deploy a self-hosted WooCommerce stack with one command, full privacy control, and ARM64 support from Raspberry Pi 5 to DGX Spark.
lightning

Sovereign AI Webshop (Part 1): No-KYC Lightning Checkout Architecture

Deploy a self-hosted WooCommerce stack with one command, full privacy control, and ARM64 support from Raspberry Pi 5 to DGX Spark.

Optimize your cloud costs, secure your login pages, and activate Amazon Associates with this battle-tested webshop setup guide.
lightning

Sovereign Webshop Setup

Optimize your cloud costs, secure your login pages, and activate Amazon Associates with this battle-tested webshop setup guide.