How my JARVIS is actually built.

01Read this first

Since the car video, the same messages have arrived every day: which model, how does he ring you, how is it that fast, what does it cost, can I have one. This page is the long answer to all of them, written once, properly.

It is the architecture and the reasoning. It is deliberately not the code, the prompts, the secrets or the security details, because the system runs my real businesses and the details that would let someone else run it are also the details that would let someone else into it. Everything below is true of the system as it stands in August 2026, checked against the code rather than my memory, and where a number doesn't exist I say so rather than invent one.

Two honest framings before you read on. First, none of this is magic: it is a Python service, a web page, a markdown folder and a lot of decisions about when the AI should and shouldn't speak. Second, mine took months of evenings and is still wrong in places (there's a whole section on that). Yours should start smaller than this page, and I'll show you where.

02Where he came from

The earliest spec I can find is from December 2023: a Raspberry Pi assistant, connected to a language model, running 24/7, with the wake word "Jarvis". The worked example I wrote for what it should do was "photograph the fridge and get a recipe from what's in it", which later became a whole separate app. So the idea is years old and the first attempts went nowhere, which is the normal shape of these things.

The version on this page, the one that actually runs the businesses, was born in early 2026 as an always-on assistant living in my notes. He got his voice, his phone line, the glass and a memory that doesn't forget over the summer of 2026, and the git history you'll see referenced in the videos starts on 9 July 2026, the day I put all of it under version control. He was never meant to be filmed; the account exists because my girlfriend talked me into it.

03 to 15The rest is one email away

Everything below is written and checked. It's free; the only thing it costs is an email address, and the link comes straight back.

• 03The one idea: demos answer, an assistant interrupts. The six-layer stack.
• 04 to 09The six layers, each with the decisions that mattered and a note from JARVIS: surfaces, reflexes, brain, foreman, reach, memory.
• 10The glue nobody shows: the usage ledger, the execution wall, the watchdog, the reaper, the dead man's switch.
• 11What it costs: the real monthly bill, line by line, and the honest split.
• 12What broke: fourteen dated faults from the logs, and the pattern behind them.
• 13How I'd start again: the seven steps in the order that would have saved me two months.
• 14Your questions, answered: which model, how he calls, why it's that fast, local or cloud, the cost, whether you can have one.