Anyone who knows me knows I hate wasting time on pointless stuff. Time is money, obviously. And over the last couple of years, the thing eating most of my time has been the repetitive work. Write a post. Update some text on the website. Send an email. Check if something broke. All tasks that don’t actually need me. They just need someone. Or these days, more like something.
So I built it. Not a single worker. Basically a whole team. Its name is Edwin, and it lives on one small computer at my place. A few years ago, unthinkable. Today, an everyday part of my work.
This is the story of how it all came together, what it can do, where I got burned, and what it cost me. Because it wasn’t and isn’t all sunshine. You’ll also find out why it’s useful for you too, and how you get to something like this even if you’re not a developer. Because I’m not either. Not even close.
It Started with Frustration
It began with boredom and frustration at the same time. I’d sunk hundreds of hours into vibecoding and figured out one thing: AI tools like Claude Code can write code, text, whatever. But every single time, you have to kick them into gear. Open, prompt, wait, close. Over and over. You’re basically a dispatcher who’s not allowed to leave the desk. Sooner or later, that drains you.
And I wanted the exact opposite. I wanted things to run while I’m asleep, at an event, or grabbing lunch. I wanted stuff to be done by morning that I only handed off the night before. Nice idea, right?
I kept thinking: what if AI wasn’t a tool I have to hold by the hand, but a team I just brief, and it handles the job itself?
That’s how Edwin was born.
Meet Edwin, Who Never Sleeps
Edwin isn’t a cloud or magic. It’s a plain Mac Mini M4 Pro with 24GB of RAM sitting at my place, running nonstop. I killed sleep mode for good, so it never dozes off. If the power cuts out, it boots itself back up. It’s a little black box, and I’ve moved a whole crew of agents into it.
Why my own machine and not just the cloud? Two reasons. First, privacy. Part of Edwin’s brain runs locally, right there on the box, so sensitive data never leaves the building. Second, I wanted something that’s mine and, more importantly, always on. I didn’t want a service someone could shut down or jack up the price on tomorrow.
And now the best part. The team.
A Copywriter? Sure. Plus a Designer, a Developer, and an Assistant
Every agent has one role and one name. I didn’t try to build a single super-smart robot that does everything. In most cases, that doesn’t work. Instead, I’ve got a crew of specialists where each one does its own thing. Just like a real company.
I talk to them through Slack, like I’m messaging coworkers. I drop a brief into a channel, and it happens. No praying to the gods.
FORGE is the developer. I tell it “change this on the website” or “add a button there,” and it codes it, tests it, and ships it. Without it, every little tweak would mean an external dev, a budget, and at least a week of waiting.
Dan 2.0 is the copywriter. It writes posts, emails, texts. And here’s the important part: it writes in my voice. It learned my tone from dozens of my old articles and posts, so when it writes something, it sounds like me, not like some robot off the internet. It effectively replaces my human copywriter, which makes life easier for both of us.
ORACLE is the conductor. It sits above everyone else, hands out the tasks, and makes sure nothing collides. When I drop a vague brief, ORACLE decides who on the team should take it and passes it on.
ALFRED is my personal assistant. It watches the calendar, the reminders, the inbox. In the morning it tells me what the day has in store.
SENTINEL is the watchdog. Every few minutes it checks whether everything’s fine, whether anything crashed, whether Edwin is overheating. If something’s off, it pings me right away. Security is number one for me, because the moment you start giving agents access to your data, you need to be sure nothing’s happening behind your back.
And then I’ve got a few more that showed up along the way. STUDIO does the graphics. HERMES sends out the mailings. Down the road I’m building NEXUS, a brain sitting on top of my CRM, and HERALD, a voice agent that’ll be able to make phone calls. But that’s still down the line.
Every day at 8 PM, the whole team sends me a diary. Who did what, how many tasks got done, whether anything’s acting up. So I’ve got the full picture, even if I don’t check in all day. No silent moves. I hear about everything.
It Sounds Great, But the Road Was Rough
I won’t pretend it just happened on its own. That wouldn’t be me.
Right at the start I accidentally deleted a file with an important config. One wrong click, and I spent half an evening piecing back together what was supposed to be there. Lesson: before you run anything for real, have backups. Always.
Then one agent started crashing in an infinite loop. It kept restarting, kept crashing, flooded my logs. It took me forever to figure out the culprit was some tiny thing buried deep in the libraries, the last place you’d look. Lesson: when something acts up, hunt down the cause, not a band-aid. Working around a problem always comes back to bite you.
And the third classic: authentication. The agents kept dropping off and I couldn’t figure out why, because everything looked set up right. Turned out it was an expired credential that needed a different way to verify. A few hours in the trash, but once you crack it, you get peace of mind.
Let’s be real, half the work wasn’t building. It was debugging. And that’s exactly what nobody tells you in those hyped-up AI videos.
What It Cost Me
Now for the numbers, because I like those specific.
Time? I’ll probably never track that one down, because I don’t log everything. It wasn’t one big push. It was a pile of small evenings where I added an agent, tuned something, fixed something. But I already know it’s going to land in the high hundreds of hours.
The Mac Mini as hardware, plus a Claude Code subscription. And a few dollars a month for other small tools. Part of the brain runs locally and for free. The one-time hardware cost stung, but it spreads out over time. And the monthly running costs come to a few thousand crowns.
Sounds like a lot, maybe. But now compare it. If I hired people for this, we’re talking a developer, a copywriter, an assistant, and a designer. That’s tens to hundreds of thousands a month. Edwin works 24/7, never gets sick, never complains, and I don’t have to pay it vacation.
How It Actually Helps Me
And now to why the whole thing was worth it.
The biggest win was time saved on the repetitive stuff. Instead of opening five tools, I write one message in Slack and it happens. A website tweak, a social post, a mailing, a check on whether something’s stuck. Things that used to eat hours, I now handle in a single sentence.
The second thing is that it runs even when I don’t. I wake up in the morning and there’s finished work I only handed off the night before. Edwin grinded all night.
But heads up, there’s a paradox waiting for you. You don’t actually save that saved time. You immediately pour it into new ideas and projects you never had the capacity for before. So instead of more free time, you end up with more things you can pull off. And honestly, that’s the most fun part.
Where This Is All Heading
This isn’t a finished thing. It’s a living organism. I’m always adding, always tuning. The next big step is wiring Edwin into my CRM so it helps me with contacts and relationships too, which is the whole foundation of networking. And then the voice agent that can pick up the phone.
But the main point isn’t how many agents I have. It’s the shift in my head. I stopped treating AI as a tool I have to hold by the hand, and started treating it as a team I brief, and it delivers.
And the best news? You don’t have to be a developer for this. I’m not. You just need the itch to try, the patience for tuning, and the willingness to get burned. The rest you pick up along the way.
Building something similar, or thinking about it? Let me know, I’m happy to talk shop. This topic really fires me up.
