What a mineral is

The two words these docs use for the thing you get, and why it is a private box of your own rather than a seat in someone's software.

Two words come up on every page of these docs, so here they are once. If you are still deciding whether the category is for you at all, start with what an AI EA actually is. If you are ready to make one, your first hour is the walkthrough.

A mineral is the machine#

A mineral is the server your assistant lives on: one box, one brain, one assistant, and nobody else in it. Not a seat in somebody's software. A machine in your own hosting account, holding your files, that you alone hold the key to. The desktop app on your computer is the window onto it; the mineral is the thing.

That distinction does most of the work. When your assistant knows your business, it knows it because your brain is a folder of readable, linked pages sitting on your own server. You can open them. You can rewrite them. You can take them and go. There is no version of this where the useful thing lives with us and you rent access to it.

Which is also why the assistant is only as good as its interview. An assistant with a thin brain is a chatbot with your logo on it. The hour you spend being interviewed is not onboarding friction, it is the product.

A pebble is your mineral#

A pebble is what we call one person's mineral: your private workspace. The app's sidebar calls the page about the machine itself Your mineral, and the page's title takes the name you gave your assistant as soon as it has read the machine. Every mineral made since September 2026 is a pebble. You will meet the word "rock" in old conversations and old commit messages; it named a community's hub in an earlier shape of the product, and there is no such thing any more.

You make it yourself, and you pay nobody but your providers#

Since September 2026 there is nothing central in this product at all. Nobody provisions a machine for you, nobody bills you, and nobody holds an account for you. The desktop app's Set up my own wizard builds your mineral on your own hosting account, with your own API token, and the only key on the server from its first boot is yours.

The costs, plainly, because they are the first screen of the wizard too:

  • a cloud server, billed to you by your hosting provider: at Hetzner about €6 to €21 a month on the Arm machines the wizard picks first (dearer where a location only sells Intel or AMD), at DigitalOcean roughly US$24 to $96, depending on the size you pick
  • your own Claude subscription, billed to you by Anthropic
  • nothing to Crads-AI, ever

Your identity here is your SSH key, not an email or a password. There is no Crads-AI sign-in because there is no Crads-AI account to sign in to: the app on your computer talks straight to your box, and a second computer gets in because a computer you already trust lets it in.

Who can see whatYour brain and your credentials live on your mineral, a server in your own account, with everything the assistant reads and writes. Your providers, the hosting company, Anthropic and GitHub, run the server, the thinking and the backup, and you pay them directly. Crads AI writes the software and reaches your machine only through a support session you grant, which is time-boxed and logged. YOUR MINERAL Your brainpages, notes Your credentialskeys and tokens Everything your assistant reads and writes Kept on a server in your own account. Your providershost, Anthropic, GitHub Crads AIwrites the software you pay them directly only if you let us in They run the server, the thinking, the backup. Never otherwise. Time-boxed, and logged. Who can see whatYour brain and your credentials live on your mineral, a server in your own account, with everything the assistant reads and writes. Your providers, the hosting company, Anthropic and GitHub, run the server, the thinking and the backup, and you pay them directly. Crads AI writes the software and reaches your machine only through a support session you grant, which is time-boxed and logged. YOUR MINERAL Your brainpages, notes Your credentialskeys and tokens Everything your assistant reads and writes Kept on a server in your own account. Your providershost, Anthropic, GitHub Crads AIwrites the software You pay them directly.They run the server,the thinking, the backup. Only if you let us in.Time-boxed, and logged.
Who can see what

Why a box each, and not one system with accounts#

The honest answer is that we tried the other versions first. A hosted platform is cheaper to run, easier to update, and much easier to sell. It is also a system where the interesting material, everyone's brain, sits within someone else's reach, and where "can you see my notes" has a complicated answer.

So: a box each, on your own account, with your own key. It costs you a hosting bill and a little setup, and it means the sentence "nobody reads your notes" is a description of the architecture rather than a promise about anyone's conduct. What happens if Crads AI goes away gets a much shorter answer under this shape, which is the point of it.

What the words mean, once#

  • Mineral: the machine your assistant lives on. A server in your own hosting account.
  • Pebble: one person's mineral. Yours.
  • Brain: the linked pages your assistant reads and writes. Yours.
  • Skill: something your assistant knows how to do, on request or on a schedule.
  • Cadence: what runs without you asking.

That is the whole vocabulary. Everything else in these docs is one of those things doing something.