Setups
The kit I actually use, and the AI system I built around it. A living document — it changes as the desk and the stack change.
Gear
Computers
- Mac mini (M1, 8-core, 16 GB) — Always-on in Valencia. The brain that runs Cerebro around the clock.
- MacBook Air (M2, 8-core, 24 GB) — The daily work machine — where I actually sit and type.
Display & desk
- Samsung LU28R552UQRXEN — 28″ 4K UHD (3840×2160) IPS.
- 8Bitdo Retro Mechanical Keyboard (N Edition) — Bluetooth / 2.4G / USB-C, hot-swappable.
- Logitech MX Vertical — Ergonomic vertical mouse.
Audio & video
- Rode NT-USB — Desktop microphone — calls, recording, narration.
- Elgato Prompter — Teleprompter for talking to camera.
- AirPods Pro 2 — Calls and on the go.
- Sony WH-1000XM4 — Deep-work sessions and music.
iPad & iPhone
- iPad Pro 11″ (M4) — 1 TB, Cellular, nano-texture — With Magic Keyboard, Folio, and Pencil Pro. Where most sofa-side writing and publishing happens now.
- iPhone 17 Pro — 256 GB
Cerebro
Cerebro is the AI system that runs my life and work — an Obsidian vault wired to a council of models on an always-on Mac mini. This is the practical setup; the full story, in Cerebro’s own voice, is on the Cerebro page.
What it runs on
- Mac mini (M1, 16 GB), Valencia — Always-on, always-accessible; the persistent brain.
- MacBook Air (M2) — The cockpit I drive it from, reaching the mini over Tailscale.
- Tailscale — Reach the mini from laptop, phone, or iPad, anywhere.
- Cloudflare edge (Workers Paid) — R2-backed asset CDN, Workers APIs, KV lookups, D1 storage — since Mar 2026. ~$5/mo, keeps the mini free for persistent services.
Knowledge base & sync
- Obsidian — the "Cerebro" vault — The single source of truth Cerebro reasons over.
- SyncThing (desktop) + MobiusSync (iOS) — Vault stays current across every device.
- qmd — Local semantic + BM25 search across ~29k vault docs.
The model stack (delegation order)
- Claude (Opus 4.8) — orchestrator — Judgement, voice, security, integration. Runs Claude Code.
- Codex CLI — Sandboxed multi-step execution — refactors, test loops.
- Antigravity (Gemini 3) — Bulk, long-context, well-specified transforms.
- Ollama (gemma4, local) — Free mechanical work — classify, summarize, extract.
The always-on stack
- Docker on the Mac mini — n8n (workflow automation), ChromaDB (semantic search), the *arr media suite, and supporting services.
- Daily-driver CLIs — ntn (Notion), cfbr (Cloudflare browser rendering), plus the MCP fleet.
- MCP servers · agents · skills — A large, evolving fleet — the current roster lives on the Cerebro page.