Written by someone who learned readiness in the field.
Run It Local is written by Mike Folk, founder of FolkTech AI. He spent 33 years in healthcare, 16 of them as a paramedic.
Why that background matters here
On a call, you don’t improvise the basics. You triage first, follow a protocol you can trust at 3 a.m., and check the bag before the next shift. Getting a company’s knowledge ready for AI rewards the same habits: decide where each job belongs, fix the paperwork in order, and check that the fix held.
That’s why the protocols here use a field structure: indications, contraindications, equipment, procedure, checks, and handoff. The background shapes the format. It isn’t a clinical, legal, or compliance credential for this subject, and nothing on this site is clinical, legal, or compliance advice.
What this site is for
To inform. Run It Local helps anyone learning local AI, from the curious to hobbyists, families, and professionals, and for teams it helps People, HR, and Ops leads and founders, think clearly about AI that runs on hardware they control: which jobs fit, what has to be true of their knowledge first, and what the tradeoffs look like on their own numbers. It also says plainly when the cloud is the better choice.
There’s no sales form, no demo button, and no lead scoring. Your results don’t route you to anyone.
Private by design
- No analytics, no cookies, and no third-party scripts or fonts. Every file comes from this site.
- Everything you enter is calculated in your browser and never sent.
- The readiness check keeps your scores only if you click Save, and only on your own device, so a retake can show what changed. You can delete them any time.
- You can check this yourself: open your browser’s developer tools, watch the Network tab, and use any tool. Once a page has loaded, its tool keeps working with your connection off.
Editorial standards
- Sourced. Every statistic links to where it came from. If we can’t source it, we don’t print it. Reasoning is labeled as reasoning, not dressed up as data.
- Vendor-neutral. We name tools only when that helps you, and we give reasonable alternatives, including open-source ones. Cloud, local, and hybrid are all fair answers.
- Disclosed. Any product we mention comes with a disclosure of any relationship we have with it, and that includes FolkTech’s own. Sponsors are always labeled “Sponsor.”
- Sponsors stay out of the tools. No sponsor appears in, or has any say over, the placement guide, the readiness check, its scoring, or the protocols’ steps. See Sponsor.
- Honest estimates. Time and difficulty are stated plainly. The cost and capacity tools model scenarios on your inputs. They’re not quotes or promised savings, and we don’t publish prices, with one exception: the Hardware deals page shows current retailer prices, each with the date we last checked it. Prices change, so always confirm at the retailer.
- People decisions stay with people. AI should answer questions and draft documents. It shouldn’t decide anything about a person.
- Corrections. If something here is wrong or out of date, email feedback@folktechai.com. We fix it and note the date.
Disclosure
Run It Local is published by FolkTech AI, which builds local AI, including Serena Business. That’s a commercial interest, and we’d rather you know it up front so you can weigh what you read. Nothing on this site is for sale, and every tool and protocol works without any FolkTech product.
Learn more, if you’re curious: FolkTech AI · Serena Business
Editorial firewall
Advertising and sponsors never affect our articles, news, or rankings. Tracked deals are picked and ordered only by price data we check ourselves. Anything a company pays for is always labeled Sponsored and kept separate. Some product links may later become affiliate links; when they do, they will be labeled.
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Practitioners write here too, under the same standards. See Write for us.