A home that explains
itself, on no one's
terms but its own.
Local-first automation, off-grid energy, and a garden — built by hand, over years, because relying on someone else's server for the porch light stopped making sense.
no walled gardens. no dashboards that end where the decisions begin.
Own the loop, start to finish.
Most of what gets sold as a "smart home" is a rented one. The lights, the locks, the thermostat — all of it phoning out to a company's server to ask permission to work. When the company changes its mind, or its pricing, or its API, the house gets dumber. That's not convenience. That's a walled garden with a welcome mat.
Sovereign Home is the opposite premise: local-first automation, local-first energy, and a garden that runs on the same logic — systems that explain their own dependencies instead of hiding them behind someone else's cloud. It's a house that works even when the internet doesn't, and a life that isn't legible to anyone who hasn't earned it.
Working, not conceptual.
Everything below is running today, in some form — imperfect, iterating, but real.
```Local-first automation stack
Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi coordinator, ZHA radio, no cloud dependency for the devices that matter. The house keeps running if the internet doesn't.
Ongoing energy independence work
Experiments in generation, storage, and load management — treated as an open problem, not a finished product.
Drainage path, built by hand
Reclaimed brick, laid to move water away from the foundation permanently. Slow, physical, and still standing. The same logic as the automation stack: solve it once, at the source.
The garden, worked and thought through
Literal food and soil work, and also where a lot of the thinking happens — see below.
Small AI tools, built to solve my own problems
Software written for specific, real friction — not demos, not products in search of a market.
Two beds, same soil.
The garden isn't a metaphor bolted onto the tech. It's the other half of the same practice — tend a system, understand its dependencies, don't outsource the parts you can do yourself.
```Soil, seasons, water, patience. A garden doesn't respond to a firmware update. It teaches you to read a system slowly, and to accept the parts you can't control.
The same discipline applied to a home network or an energy system: know what depends on what, keep the critical path local, and don't let convenience quietly become dependency.
Builders, not spectators.
I'm not looking for a co-founder deck or a leaderless collective. This is my thesis, my house, my garden — and I'm looking for a small number of people to build alongside, on their own related pieces, in the open.
```Yes-and, not gatekeeping. Smart enough to know what they don't know, and generous about sharing what they do.
Freedom-oriented in practice, not just in theory. Unfettered by rules that exist for their own sake — but still finishes things.
Comfortable async. Most of this happens over a build log and a monthly call, not a shared office.
Working on something adjacent — energy, local-first software, off-grid systems, freedom tech — even if it's not identical to this.
Not looking for: investors, a full-time hire, or anyone who needs the plan approved before they'll pick up a tool.
```Low-travel, by design.
I'm remote, and travel takes more out of me than it gives back. So the collaboration is built to not depend on it.
```A shared build log and repo. Progress in public, async, at whatever pace the work actually needs.
One standing call a month for the people actively building. Short, working, not a status meeting.
Rare, optional, never the backbone. If it happens, it's because it earned its cost — not the default plan.
If this is you, say so.
Tell me what you're building, and where it touches this. No pitch decks — just email me directly at info@kate.io.