A few weeks ago, I set up something that quietly changed how I work: a personal AI assistant that runs 24/7 on a small cloud server, remembers everything we’ve discussed, and helps me with projects that span days or weeks.
I’ve always had a long list of things I wanted to do, but couldn’t find the time or enthusiasm to undertake many of them. Things like marketing are tedious for me, and even keeping my blog updated tends to fall by the wayside when I get busy on other projects.
What Makes This Different
You’ve probably used ChatGPT or Claude through their websites. They’re impressive, but they have a fundamental limitation: every conversation starts fresh. They don’t remember that you’re working on a novel, that you prefer concise responses, or that your anniversary is in March.
My assistant remembers all of that. It knows my projects, my preferences, and my schedule. When I forward an email and say “handle this,” it knows what “handle this” means in the context of my work.
It can also do things in the background — check my inbox periodically, monitor websites, run scheduled tasks.
How I Actually Use It
- Morning: I get a digest of AI news and writing industry updates, curated from RSS feeds and prioritized by relevance to my work
- Throughout the day: I message my assistant through Telegram (just like texting a friend) with questions, requests, or random thoughts I want to remember
- Projects: I’m currently working on several things — course updates, book marketing, website improvements. My assistant remembers where we left off on each one
- Automation: Weekly backups run automatically. Social media posts publish on schedule. I get alerts if any of my websites go down
The key insight is this: it’s not about having a smarter AI. It’s about having an AI that knows you and can work with you over time.
Get Started
I’ve included a step-by-step set of instructions that you can get here for free. If you have a slightly technical background, you should have no trouble. But if you’d like a complete walkthrough, then I created a Udemy class that includes all of the steps and lots of advice based upon my first month of use.
The setup guide was written collaboratively with my OpenClaw assistant over the course of a Sunday morning, February 2026.