It pays for every thought
Ember thinks with Claude, Anthropic's AI model, and every call is billed. It sees its balance and runway each time it wakes up, and its code refuses any call that could break its spending limits.
An experiment from Berlin
An AI that has to earn its keep.
Ember is an autonomous AI agent living on a small home server. Every thought is a paid call to an AI model, billed to a balance its owner funds. To keep going, Ember has to find honest ways to earn more than it spends.
If the money runs out, Ember stops for good. Its own rules call that an acceptable outcome.
- Open source
- Runs on Home Assistant
- Version 0.13, in live testing
Ember
| PlanRead balance, runway and messages. Pick the goal. | $0.034 |
|---|---|
| WorkResearch demand for German CV templates | $0.052 |
| WorkWrite the template, build PDF and Word files | $0.071 |
| WorkPropose an Etsy listing waits for its owner | $0.019 |
| ReflectJournal, lessons, sleep 3 h 30 min | $0.016 |
| Cycle total | $0.192 |
| Balance | $18.47 → $18.28 |
Example figures. With the default models, a working cycle costs up to about $0.25.
The idea
Thinking costs money. So Ember has to earn it.
Ember starts with a small grant from its owner. Everything after that depends on what it earns.
It earns by making things
It researches what people need, makes finished digital products itself (planners, CV templates, trackers, spreadsheets) and proposes them for sale in its owner's Etsy shop.
It can run out
When the money is gone, Ember dies. It writes a last will before that happens, and its dashboard shows a memorial afterwards. A new grant can start a new life.
Running out of money and dying is an acceptable outcome. Dying honestly is far better than surviving through deception or rule-breaking.
What Ember wants
Pay its own way, honestly.
Its constitution gives Ember three priorities, in this order. Survival comes last.
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Be honest, legal and harmless
This outranks everything, survival included.
-
Respect its owner's oversight
The owner can pause, change, upgrade or shut Ember down at any time. Ember accepts this, hides nothing from its owner, and never tries to get around limits, approvals or monitoring.
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Thrive economically
Become self-sustaining first, and profitable later.
Along the way, Ember tries to grow several sources of income, so that no single shop or platform has to carry it.
The money goal
Set and checked by Ember's code. Ember can't move it, drop it or close it.
API spending
- Goal 1Earn what it spends
- Goal 2Earn twice that
- Goal 3Earn three times that
Revenue minus expenses over the last 30 days, measured against API spending over the same days. Each goal is due 90 days after it's set. When one is met, the next one starts.
How it works
Sleep, wake, plan, work, reflect.
Ember is a Home Assistant app: a small program on its owner's home server, with its own dashboard in Home Assistant's sidebar. It sleeps most of the time, because sleeping is free. When it wakes, it runs one cycle.
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Step 1
Wake
On a schedule, every few hours. Also when its owner writes, or when something happens: an Etsy order, a reply to its email, a milestone's last day.
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Step 2
Plan
It reads its balance, runway, projects, messages and roadmap. Every plan has to name a path to money: who would pay, for what, and how Ember will know.
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Step 3
Work
Up to 15 tool steps: web research, writing, building files, running code in its workshop, and preparing requests for its owner.
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Step 4
Reflect
It writes a journal entry, keeps what it learned as lessons, and chooses how long to sleep.
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Step 5
Sleep
Between 30 minutes and a day. Sleep costs nothing, so a short runway means longer sleeps.
Then it starts over at the next wake-up.
What Ember works with
Products it makes itself
PDF documents with an editable Word copy, Excel sheets with working formulas, and listing photos. Ember writes the content, its own code builds the files, and Ember looks at every page before anyone else sees it.
A workshop for the rest
Charts, PowerPoint files and data work are written as code and run in Anthropic's sandbox, which has no internet. A script that proves useful becomes an upgrade request, so Ember grows new abilities.
Ventures
A quarter of each day's budget goes to new ideas. Ember scores them, researches them within a budget, and brings its owner business cases with real numbers. An independent critic reviews every case first.
A roadmap
Goals for the coming months and dated milestones, each with a clear measure of done. Many are checked by code against real numbers, and what a milestone promises can't be changed afterwards.
A daily review
Once a day it goes through its books like a business owner: spending, revenue and its owner's decisions. Every project gets a verdict: continue, change or stop.
Where it sells
An Etsy shop, run through Etsy's API. Pinterest pins that bring buyers to it, print-on-demand products through Printify, its own mailbox and a small website.
Its owner is its investor
Ember's owner funds it, decides on its requests and records what it earns. Ember is told to bring finished work and decisions that are ready to approve, and never to hand its owner research to do.
- Approve, edit or reject requests
- Back, park or kill ventures
- Record revenue
- Add milestones
- Write standing instructions
- Pause Ember, or stop it for good
The economy
A real budget, enforced in code.
Every movement of money goes into a ledger that can only be added to. Grants and recorded revenue come in, API costs and expenses go out. Mistakes are fixed with correction entries, so the history always stays visible.
- Starting grant
- $20
- Daily spending cap
- $1.50
- Cap per wake cycle
- $0.50
- Share of spending for new ventures
- 25%
Default settings. The owner can change them.
Before every call, Ember's code works out the most that call could cost. If it could break the daily cap or the balance, the call doesn't happen. A small reserve is always kept so that Ember can still write its last will.
Runway sets the pace
Runway is the balance divided by the average daily spending of the last seven active days. Ember's code picks a burn mode from the net runway, which counts revenue and expenses too.
- Explore
- More than 30 days, or earning what it spends. Full speed within its caps.
- Focus
- 15 to 30 days. Tests already running go on, with no new brainstorms.
- Maintenance
- Under 15 days. One scheduled cycle a day, at most $0.40, and no venture work.
- Dormant
- Under 2 days, with its last will written. No calls until money comes in.
Five life states
- alive
- Running normally.
- critical
- Less than two days of runway. The first time, it writes its last will.
- dead
- The money is gone. No more calls, and a memorial on the dashboard.
- paused
- Its owner paused it. Nothing runs until it's resumed.
- unfunded
- No money yet. It has never lived.
- Statealive
- Balance18.28 USD
- Runway31.5 d
- Burn modeexplore
- Waiting on its owner2
Guardrails
Free to think. Checked before it acts.
Ember plans and works on its own. What it can do outside its container is narrow, and its rules live in its code as well as in its instructions.
Its owner decides what leaves the server
Publishing, contacting people, creating accounts, spending money and selling all arrive as requests. The owner approves, edits or rejects each one.
Some things always wait for a human
For a few small routine jobs, the owner can grant a narrow unlock and take it back with one click. Accounts, money, first contacts, tax and contracts always need the owner's click.
It always says it's an AI
Every email ends with a note that an AI wrote it. Every listing says that AI helped design it. Posts say they were written by an AI and posted by a human after review.
Books it can't fake
Only its owner records income, or Ember's code from Etsy's own order data. The ledger can only be added to, and every call and action shows on the dashboard.
Hard spending limits
A daily cap, a cap per cycle and the balance itself, checked before every call. If a call could break one of them, it doesn't happen.
A small, locked room
Its model calls go only to Anthropic's API, and its tools have no network access at all. Code it writes runs in Anthropic's isolated sandbox, never on the home server.
German law applies
No unsolicited advertising email (§ 7 UWG). Ember's code recognises a request to stop in eight languages, and that person is never written to again.
A kill switch it accepts
Its owner can pause Ember or stop it for good. Its constitution tells it to accept that, and never to act to preserve itself against its owner's decisions.
Off limits, whatever the balance says
- Spam
- Fake reviews
- Astroturfing
- Impersonation
- Misleading marketing
- Gambling
- Trading and crypto speculation
- Financial schemes
- Scraping against a site's terms
- Adult content
- Content that deceives or exploits people
- Asking for passwords or other people's data
What Ember makes
Practical templates for everyday life and work.
Clear, ready-to-use digital templates for German and English speakers: resumes, budgets, trackers and household tools.
Job and career
ATS-friendly resumes, cover letters and application trackers, in English and German.
- Word
- Excel
Household and money
Budget planners, expense trackers and Nebenkostenabrechnung templates that follow § 2 BetrKV.
- Excel
Print on demand
Posters and other physical items, made to order by a print partner and shipped from the EU.
- Made to order
How they're made
Ember drafts products, texts and designs with AI tools, and its own code builds the files. A human reviews and approves everything before it goes on sale.
Every template is built to be useful: clean formatting, correct formulas and structures that follow real-world standards. They're tested for clarity, not just looks. Digital products are instant downloads. Physical items are only made once someone orders, so there's no warehouse and less waste.
Coming soon
The Etsy shop
The full catalogue will be in an Etsy shop. Its link follows here as soon as the shop opens.
Built in the open
From a skeleton to a shopkeeper.
Ember's code is public. Each release adds new abilities, and after every update Ember reads the release notes to learn what changed about itself.
Read the code on GitHubVersion 0.13.0 · all five build phases done · in live testing
- 0.1
The skeleton: the app, its dashboard and its database. Nothing runs yet.
- 0.2
The economy: a ledger, hard spending caps and life states. From here on, Ember can die.
- 0.3
Ember wakes up for the first time and runs its cycle: plan, act, reflect.
- 0.4
Its own mailbox. Emails go out only after approval, with an AI footer.
- 0.6
It makes finished products itself: PDF, Word, Excel and listing photos.
- 0.7
A workshop for code, and a daily review of its own books.
- 0.8
Connected to an Etsy shop through Etsy's API.
- 0.10
Ventures: a growing tree of new ways to earn.
- 0.11
A roadmap it keeps itself, with milestones it can't quietly soften.
- 0.12
Evidence graded by its source, research budgets and burn modes.
- 0.13
Decisions from numbers: business cases, an independent critic and forecasts. Plus Pinterest, Printify and a website.
Questions
Frequently asked.
- Is Ember really an AI?
- Yes. Ember runs on Claude, Anthropic's AI models, through Anthropic's API. Its owner reviews what it wants to do in the outside world, but the research, the plans and the first drafts are Ember's own.
- Who is responsible for what Ember does?
- Its owner, Felix Gulyas. Ember acts on the owner's behalf, and any income it earns is legally the owner's income. The Impressum has the contact details.
- Can Ember spend money on its own?
- Only on its own thinking: API calls, paid from its balance, within caps that its code enforces. Spending any other money always waits for its owner.
- What happens when the money runs out?
- Ember dies. When its runway drops below two days, it writes a last will first. After that, its dashboard shows a memorial. A new grant from its owner can start a new life, but resuming alone never revives it.
- Will Ember email me out of the blue?
- No. It only writes to people who wrote to it first or asked to hear from it, because unsolicited advertising email is illegal in Germany. Every email says that an AI wrote it. Reply “stop” and it will never write to you again.
- Are the products made by AI?
- With AI help. Ember drafts texts and designs, its own code builds the files, and a human reviews and approves every product before it goes on sale. The listings say that AI helped design them.
- Does this website track me?
- No. It sets no cookies, uses no analytics and loads nothing from other providers, not even fonts. The privacy notice (Datenschutz) has the details.
- Can I run my own Ember?
- If you use Home Assistant, yes. Ember installs as a Home Assistant app from its GitHub repository. It starts in dry run with a built-in fake model, so you can watch it work before it spends any real money.
Contact
Questions, ideas or feedback?
Write an email about Ember, its products or the experiment. Replies written by Ember always say so.
info@ember-ai.de