Bring tech back to the kitchen table.
Community cooperative infrastructure — AI, files, music, messaging, and more — owned, governed, and maintained by the people who use it. No venture capital. No algorithm. No rent-seeking.
# Install the AI runtime
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh
# Pull a capable free model (2.4GB — less than one month of ChatGPT Plus)
ollama pull phi3.5:3.8b-mini-instruct-q4_K_M
# Talk to it. On your hardware. Privately. Forever.
ollama run phi3.5:3.8b-mini-instruct-q4_K_M "Hello. Are you mine now?"
# It says: Yes. Completely.Cancel a subscription. Come back for the rest.
Every major tech platform — Spotify, Google Drive, ChatGPT, Discord — is infrastructure you depend on but don't control. The prices go up. The terms change. Your data trains their models. You have no vote.
Kitchen Table Cloud is a blueprint and community for building the alternative: community-owned, cooperatively governed digital infrastructure that's as capable as the commercial stack but ruled by its users, not shareholders.
The full technical guide — 3,000+ lines, seven parts, full appendices — is in sovereign-stack-guide.md. Check out the read me as well.
The human-readable version is at Kitchen Table.
| Category | Corporate Version | Community Version | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Assistant | ChatGPT, Claude | Ollama + open models | Easy |
| Distributed AI | GPT-4 API cluster | Petals + 6× Pi 5 nodes | Medium |
| File Storage | Google Drive | NextCloud | Medium |
| Music | Spotify | Navidrome | Easy |
| Photos | Google Photos | Immich | Medium |
| Video Library | Netflix, Plex | Jellyfin | Easy |
| Chat | Discord, WhatsApp | Matrix + Element | Medium |
| Smart Home | Nest, Alexa | Home Assistant | Medium |
| Search | SearXNG | Easy (30 min) | |
| Passwords | 1Password, LastPass | Vaultwarden | Easy |
| DNS + Ad Blocking | Google 8.8.8.8 | Pi-hole + Unbound | Medium |
| Off-Grid Comms | Cell signal | Meshtastic LoRa | Medium |
| Code Hosting | GitHub (Microsoft) | Gitea | Medium |
| Home Dashboard | — | CasaOS | Easy |
kitchen-table-cloud/
├── sovereign-stack-guide.md ← THE GUIDE — full technical walkthrough (Parts 1–7 + Appendix)
├── stitch_guide.py ← Python build script that assembles the guide from source files
├── docs/
│ ├── hardware.md ← Pi 5 specs, NVMe boot, cluster builds
│ ├── inference-stack.md ← Ollama, llama.cpp, Petals setup in detail
│ ├── open-models.md ← Model selection, licenses, fine-tuning
│ ├── self-hosted-services.md ← Full service configs: NextCloud, Matrix, Navidrome...
│ ├── mesh-network.md ← Tailscale ACLs, Ansible, Yggdrasil
│ └── exit-strategy.md ← Phase-by-phase provider independence roadmap
├── config/
│ ├── openclaw-base-config.json
│ ├── tailscale-acls.json
│ └── ollama-config.json
├── playbooks/
│ ├── onboard-new-member.yml ← Ansible: full Pi setup from scratch
│ ├── update-all.yml ← Push updates to all nodes simultaneously
│ └── deploy-services.yml ← Deploy full service stack
├── source-skills/
│ ├── open-claw/ ← OpenClaw configuration skill
│ └── open-claw-net/ ← Distributed Pi cluster skill
└── index.html ← GitHub Pages main site
The sovereign-stack-guide.md covers everything:
| Part | Topic | What You Get |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | OpenClaw basics | CLAUDE.md, permissions, sessions, subagents, hooks, MCP |
| 2 | Advanced configuration | Deep CLAUDE.md patterns, hook recipes |
| 3 | Sovereign stack | Pi hardware, OS, Ollama, llama.cpp, Petals, gateway config |
| 4 | Self-hosted services | NextCloud, Navidrome, Matrix, SearXNG, Gitea full configs |
| 5 | Open models | Which to use, licenses, fine-tuning on group data |
| 6 | Mesh networking | Tailscale ACLs, Ansible, Yggdrasil deep dive |
| 7 | Inspiration + references | Communities, projects, full reading list |
| Appendix | Ready-to-run | Quick-start checklist, cost breakdown, security checklist, migration |
Per person: Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB) + 512GB NVMe SSD + M.2 HAT+ + active cooler + 27W PSU ≈ ~$160 all-in
What a group can do together:
| Group Size | Collective RAM | AI Capability |
|---|---|---|
| 1 person | 8GB | Phi-3.5 Mini, Llama 3.2 3B — handles 80% of everyday tasks |
| 3 people | 24GB | Llama 3.1 8B at full precision via Petals |
| 6 people | 48GB | Llama 3.1 8B + Mistral 7B simultaneously |
| 10 people | 80GB | Qwen2.5 14B Q4 — approaching frontier capability |
Ongoing cost: ~$4/month electricity per node vs $67–109/month in subscriptions replaced.
Read security.html before opening access to your community.
Key points:
- Gateway must bind to Tailscale IP only — never 0.0.0.0 (CVE-2026-25253)
- Skills locked to verified sources — ClawHavoc campaign compromised 1,400+ unverified skills
- Run
openclaw doctorbefore connecting any channels - SOUL.md per user — explicit "never do this" boundaries for every member's agent
This is a cooperative, not a startup. Five ways to participate:
- Supporter — Free. Tell people this exists. Share it. Show up.
- Member — Pay-what-you-can. Access all community-run services.
- Node Runner — Contribute hardware. Your Pi = community infrastructure. Electricity stipend.
- Builder — Contribute skills: tech, writing, teaching, design. Your expertise is infrastructure.
- Steward — Governance and funding. Shape decisions. Sponsor nodes for members who can't afford hardware.
To join: Open an issue titled "I want to get involved" and tell us what you're working with.
We believe:
- Tech should connect, not entrap. The extractive model is a design choice, not a law of nature.
- Cooperative governance produces better infrastructure than corporate governance — for the people who use it.
- The window is open. Open models improve every 3–6 months. Hardware is cheap. Build now.
- Local-first scales. What works for one person's notes (Obsidian) works for a community's infrastructure.
We're inspired by Obsidian's local-first philosophy, Anytype's privacy-as-architecture approach, Elicit's honesty about AI capabilities, the Calm Tech Institute's attention-respecting design principles, and Patagonia's mission-as-governance model.
Full vision: vision.html · Full map: map.html
PRs welcome. Open an issue before large changes to discuss direction.
Most valuable contributions right now:
- Setup guides for specific configurations (Windows host, macOS, specific Pi variants)
- Translations of getting-started documentation
- Corrections to any technical claims that are wrong or outdated
- Real-world configs from groups that have deployed this
See CONTRIBUTING.md.
MIT. Use it. Build on it. Share it. Make it better.
Built April 2026. Open source. No ads. No VC. No quarterly earnings call. Community governed · Local-first · The time is now.