Watch the journey
I post it as it happens. These are good places to start.
I'm trying to run my family's life with private AI on a $600 Mac mini.
I'm Kylie. I'm a mom with a background in tech, but I'm not technical. I use AI to build private tools for my own family, and I share what I learn.
What my family tells an AI should stay in my house.
When you chat with an AI service, what you type goes to that company's computers. For my family, I want an assistant that lives on a computer in my house and knows us because I told it. I'd also rather show you how to run private tools in your own home than build apps that hold your family's information.
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What runs at home today
My family's assistant uses an AI model that lives on my Mac mini. It's slower than the big cloud models, and I've made my peace with that. My phone dashboard runs from the same computer.
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What still uses the cloud
The tools that help with my content, including my reel editor, still use cloud AI. So does the helper my family assistant uses to browse the web. I haven't moved that work home yet.
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What I'm testing
Whether the private AI a $600 Mac mini with 16 GB of memory can handle is enough to run a family's life. With a bigger computer that wouldn't be a question, so I'm using the kind most families could buy.
What I've built so far
I give the background work to AI so I can be with my son without a to-do list running in my head. I built these with AI, one question at a time.
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A team preps my content
AI agents I set up keep my content calendar, pull ideas from my own stories and draft a first pass. I film and approve every post myself.
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One private screen on my phone
A private page on my home network shows what today needs from me. It runs from the Mac mini in my house.
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Reels edited from my phone
I bought an editing tool, then built a way to run it from a chat on my phone. I send it my takes and tell it what to change.
Where it started
Kit was the first thing I built. I had the idea and none of the skills, so I asked AI for every piece. It's a free kitchen app that plans the week's meals and writes the grocery list, leaving off what's already in your pantry. Building it showed me I could build, and it got me thinking about who holds a family's information.