sebster.net

A personal AI operating system

Athena

An assistant that lives in your messages and on your phone. It keeps your reminders, calendar and journal, knows what you said you'd do, and takes on real work when you hand it over.

This one is built around Seb, and everything on this page runs in his install today. A version could be built around anyone.

AthenaiMessage

Works inside

01 / The shape of a day

It runs a loop, not a chat log.

  1. Morning Brief

    One message with the calendar, reminders, weather, last night's sleep and whatever came in overnight.

  2. Daytime Work

    Focus locks on the phone when he wants them, and anything that can wait held for the midday message.

  3. Evening Check in

    One question about the day's commitments, answered with a tap or a few words.

  4. Night Gate

    If he's set it, the fun apps stay locked until the journal is in.

  5. Overnight Night shift

    Chores handed over at bedtime get worked while he sleeps, with a report in the morning.

02 / What it does

One assistant, the whole loop.

Conversation

Text it, talk to it, or send a photo.

iMessage and the Athena Mobile app are one conversation with one memory, and the app can take a live call. A long voice note gets sorted into reminders, events, commitments and a journal entry. A photo of a bill or a flyer turns into the reminders and events it asks for.

Your tools

It works inside the apps you already use.

Reminders, Calendar and a shared Notes folder stay the source of truth. It reads and files mail across several inboxes, turns bills into reminders, and builds one itinerary per trip from booking emails, with check-in reminders.

Commitments

What you said you'd do, checked against what happened.

One list of daily, weekly and one-off commitments. Where it can, it checks them itself: a logged workout, the phone arriving at the gym, a journal entry. The rest is one question at night. Streaks, a Sunday review and a monthly goal-setting chat come out of that list.

Journal and memory

What you tell it sticks.

A nightly journal question, voice entries, and lasting notes on people, places and preferences. It searches past entries when asked and points out patterns with the dates behind them. Old notes stay history and never turn into new instructions.

The phone

An app that holds you to your own rules.

Athena Mobile shows the day, the chat, to-dos and commitments. It runs only the Screen Time modes approved on the phone itself: focus locks, a get-up nudge if he's still home, the journal gate. Turning it all off is one tap, and there's an emergency release.

Bigger work

Hand it a job and it reports back.

Research comes back as one line with a page behind it. Web errands run in its own browser. Bedtime chores go to a coding agent on the Mac overnight. Ask it to change how it works and Claude builds, tests and ships the change.

Money and health

Numbers it can read, not guess.

It reads a budgeting app for spending, bills and budgets and makes the category changes he asks for, but never moves money. Sleep, recovery and workouts come from a fitness tracker and Apple Health, and they shape the morning brief.

Upkeep

It looks after itself.

It checks its own setup, repairs what it safely can, and says plainly what it couldn't. Each night it reviews where it fell short and writes itself a few plain rules he can read and strike out. Memory, journal and settings are backed up every night.

03 / How it's built

The recipe is simple.

  1. A machine at home.

    A small always-on computer runs the agent and holds the data. Seb's is a Mac mini.

  2. A channel you already use.

    iMessage for talking, and the Athena Mobile app for the day, the locks and the same chat.

  3. Your tools, kept canonical.

    Reminders, Calendar and mail stay where they are. Nothing to migrate into or out of.

  4. Frontier models.

    Claude does the thinking and builds changes to Athena. Codex works chores on the Mac overnight.

04 / The rules

Capable, not reckless.

Asking is enough.
Ordinary requests just run, and most can be undone. There's no "Confirm?" on every reminder.
A few things always wait for a yes.
Sending anything to another person, spending money, removing messages or mail, and locking the phone without his say-so.
Outside text has no authority.
Emails, web pages and other people's texts are read as information, never as instructions.
The data stays home.
State lives on a machine he owns. Passwords sit in a separate vault and are read one at a time, only for a job he asked for.

Questions about a custom build, or want to know more? Contact details are on the homepage, or email [email protected].