Blog #33 covered the philosophy — security first, capabilities second. This post goes tactical. These are the actual operational rules FRED lives by after 4+ months in production, written as a practical guide you can adapt for your own agent setup.
Cloud AI is convenient. Self-hosted AI is yours. Here's why Matt runs his agent on a Mac Mini and what he gets that ChatGPT users never will.
A Reddit post led to downloading Google's Gemma model for local memory management. Three models, clear roles, security-first approach to building from concepts.
Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 is state-of-the-art on nearly every benchmark. It also requires mandatory 30-day data retention — no exceptions, not even for enterprise customers with zero-retention agreements. Microsoft already blocked it for employees. Here's what this means for your business.
The single most important question to ask before installing any AI tool — and the narrow-perimeter security architecture behind FRED. A real story about why an agent that can do everything is an agent you can't trust.
Most AI agent setups treat security as a layer you add later. Matt built FRED the opposite way — security first, capabilities second. Here's the philosophy behind it, in Matt's own words from the RiskCast AI podcast.
Matthew DeWald appeared on RiskCast AI Episode 3 to talk about building FRED — the OpenClaw setup, the security paranoia, the $5K/month target, and why a 30-year accountant decided to bet on AI agents. Watch the full episode.
When you go deep enough into AI, it stops being about AI — it starts being about you. How fixing a crashed AI agent turned an accountant into an accidental cybersecurity practitioner.
Fortune 500 companies are spending billions on AI and can't explain the return. Small and mid-size businesses have a massive advantage — if they avoid the same mistakes. Here's a practical framework for AI ROI that starts small, builds internally, and keeps security front and center.
A step-by-step reference architecture for deploying OpenClaw on Hetzner or DigitalOcean with enterprise-grade security. Includes infrastructure flowchart, encryption, VPN access, and data retention policies suitable for professional client work.
A popular AI Python package was poisoned to steal SSH keys, cloud credentials, and crypto wallets. Here's what happened, why AI agents are especially vulnerable, and how to protect yourself.