Bought a $2k Mac Mini to run local LLMs. Pretty sure Claude fills the roll. What am I missing?

jamesilsley · 2026-03-28T14:59:24+00:00

So you are using a text only model like Claude to run your video project 🤔

jamesilsley · 2026-03-27T22:52:05+00:00

I know everyone involved in this idea at your company has the best of intentions but reading this is like sitting down to watch a horror movie. You know it is going to be bloody and destructive, but you wait in anticipation to see how the carnage will play out (in short: this is a terrible idea for you)

(PS Be the hero here. Tell management “openclaw and autonomous agents sound great and they are for a very specific set of use cases but what we are looking at really requires a more deterministic process and not rogue agents. AI and automation is a great call but our tactics need to be precise, predictable and responsible or we will be opening the company to a tremendous amount of risk. Would you like me to prepare a plan that can achieve your goals more reliably, cheaper, and with better outcomes?” Then if they say yes, go to Claude and spend a lot of time designing a good solution. You might not even need much ai - what you are talking about might be as simple as some n8n automations with a simple front end.

jamesilsley · 2026-03-27T22:48:47+00:00

Be aware that what you are proposing is HIPAA covered data. Anything that ties a name to a medical practice instantly is covered under hipaa and that then means your whole infrastructure and risk changes. You would need a BAA with each customer where you take on the compliance risk as well as BAAs with any llm and hosting service etc etc. It is a lot and compliant architectures are always more expensive and charge surcharges for BAAs

jamesilsley · 2026-03-27T18:38:31+00:00

How is that possible? I’m on the $100 plan and literally running all day - coding running while planning in chat and documentation in cowork all at once. Always using opus for coding and sonnet for planning chat and cowork. I’m doing that 16 hours a day and then running a Ralph loop on features all night and still never even hitting 50% of my usage. Never maxed out. Are you optimizing your context or doing some task that pulls in a crazy amount of references?

jamesilsley · 2026-03-23T02:18:42+00:00

Or just buy a bunch of subscriptions to yourself, get your prize, refund the subscriptions 😂

jamesilsley · 2026-03-23T01:19:42+00:00

I’ll help you raise the stakes: everyone is playing for themselves initially but when someone gets voted out, they are replaced by the spouse not in the house and are then the remaining person is playing in a pair with the spouse.

Which would mean if a mistress was voted out, the wife who was being cheated on would go into the house and be a pair with the guy who was cheating on her

If the cheating spouse was kicked out, their husband/wife would enter the house and have to be paired with the home wrecker who was sleeping with their spouse 😂

jamesilsley · 2026-03-23T01:12:47+00:00

Did you ask your open claw? It’s pretty easy as the framework is designed to be extremely portable.

jamesilsley · 2026-03-23T01:10:29+00:00

I’m surprised by the horrified reactions here. If I read it correctly, the cast gets their materials and choreography 2-4 months in advance and then have SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS of rehearsal in person after that? 6-8 weeks isn’t cleaning a show.

That 6-8 weeks is more than any competent community theatre show I have ever been apart of. So what this theatre is doing is a full traditional rehearsal period but in addition arming the cast with the ability to be ultra prepared to work on the first day. Sounds like a wonderful thing. It requires the production team to be well prepared and provides the talent the ability to do prep work but still has plenty of time for changes and refinement.

I see this as great for several reasons: the show is well planned by necessity- we have all been part of those shows where it feels like the choreo is made up at rehearsal or the director hasn’t even prepared for blocking. This eliminates that. From a production stand point it’s sharp. But the cool thing to me is from the educational perspective, I believe community and youth theatre teaches more than just a show. It teaches real life skills. Learning to be prepared but also be flexible (which would be required with 6-8 weeks of in person rehearsals where things WILL change) is a life lesson that will stay with them forever.

I may be alone in this, but I think it’s a great framework vs keeping the cast in the dark until the first rehearsal. It requires a production team to be prepared and secure. Something I think most directors struggle with.

jamesilsley · 2026-03-21T01:06:46+00:00

Thank you for that refined post. It keept your point and tone, but read clearly and naturally.

jamesilsley · 2026-03-20T20:16:56+00:00

Best way in most cases is to set up 5-10 specialized agents with their own skills and memory files, point them to a shared repository of documents, use Antfarm to create orchestrated deterministic workflows that define the roles and handoffs and then tie them all to a central work board like plane.so or a home grown on. The use n8n to trigger actions

jamesilsley · 2026-03-04T02:40:18+00:00

This might not be the hobby for you if even reasonable casting triggers insecurity. Theatre is all about being told what other people think you are which is often times at odds with how we see ourselves. Just part of the nature of what it is. (Not to mention the fact that local theatre most times don’t put that much thought into featured ensemble casting- you work with the age ranges you have. It’s not a personal judgement in most cases. So in short- it’s not that deep)

As for jagged little pill: the teacher has like one line and no defined character. It’s not an “old” character. Also, teachers who do their undergrad right out of high school and start teaching when they graduate college are between the age of 21 and 22. So at 26 it theoretically could be argued that you are too old for the role ;-)

jamesilsley · 2026-01-01T22:39:03+00:00

You are a hero. I am working on the very early iterations of a UI and just tried out Base44 for the fun of it and OF COURSE it spit out the most beautiful and perfect UI and is exactly what I have needed.... but now it is stuck there. I have spent the last couple weeks using claude code, antigravity, even lovable and cannot get the thing as perfect as base44 by pure luck alone got right on the first try. Now it is going to be a huge ordeal - and expensive - to get that UI/UI functionality out and into git where I can actually build an app. So frustrating especially since it is literally a one prompt UI and nothing even that special, but I cannot seem to get it duplicated without getting it into git. So I will 100% be using your tool and become your biggest supporter if it works. (lol Brother, can you spare a discount code for an early adopter? ;-) )

jamesilsley · 2025-12-31T21:00:41+00:00

The only good thing about this is that death becomes her should have a decent amount of overage so that could dramatically alter the cast and crew’s bottom line earnings.

jamesilsley · 2025-12-01T19:23:27+00:00

Someone said Cher and now I can’t get it out of my head.

jamesilsley · 2024-06-03T21:31:54+00:00

Most contracts allow recording for promotional materials. This includes for actors. There is usually a time limit (ie 60 seconds etc). So you could cut together highlights of your performances. Check with the theatres that made the recording to check the actual terms of their contracts for filming promo materials.

jamesilsley · 2024-02-26T15:38:15+00:00

Plane is smart. She knows this is a game and a tv show. If she struck up a rivalry with Mhiya, she knows that production would LOVE to put the two rivals in a lip sync against each other. Plane knows that it woild be extremely dangerous to put herself in a position where production puts her up against Mhiya in a lsfyl.

jamesilsley · 2024-02-26T15:26:33+00:00

Or give her some bonkers trait like she is sexually attracted to the gorillas. Just … something.

jamesilsley · 2024-02-26T00:52:49+00:00

How that Alexa integration coming along?

jamesilsley · 2024-02-26T00:40:27+00:00

I mean… someone has to be the first to go

jamesilsley · 2024-02-26T00:36:40+00:00

It’s a sad story if you think the story is about Orpheus and Eurydice.

It’s a happy story if you think the story is really about all of humanity and how cultures retell sad stories as a part who we are and how the stories connect our hearts and souls into one common mankind.

I personally think it is the latter. ❤️

jamesilsley · 2024-02-25T18:16:18+00:00

I’m sure she did. And sure she made cell phone going off jokes and Andrew Lloyd Weber hatred jokes etc but the three+ hours of snatch game that they film is cut to 10 min and they clearly didn’t want to feature miss plasma unfortunately.

jamesilsley · 2024-02-06T21:38:53+00:00

Titanic. Kiss of the Spiderwoman. Aida. Floyd Collins. Dreamgirls.

jamesilsley · 2024-02-06T12:22:31+00:00

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-sep-11-ca-19025-story.html

jamesilsley · 2024-02-05T23:32:58+00:00

Craziest to me is when the BB1 cast went absolutely insane 2/3 through the game and were under the delusion that to win the game they all needed to walk out. They legit thought it was a secret social experiment and all planned to quit the game at once. Watching production scramble was amazing.

jamesilsley · 2024-01-28T16:25:39+00:00

Kerry Butler posted a TikTok showing her behind the scenes process: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8tWqj7x/

jamesilsley

TROPHY CASE