The Command Center

The Mac Mini M4 Pro sits on the desk. Next to it, under dual heat lamps, is a blue plastic tote full of baby birds.

This isn't a coincidence. The Mac Mini throws off waste heat — enough that it meaningfully helps keep the incubator at temperature. Fewer cold spots this year. Steadier hatches. The machine that runs the AI is literally keeping the eggs warm.

The same machine runs Farm Guardian — three cameras watching for hawks so the flock can free-range. The same machine is home to Bubba, the farmer's OpenClaw agent on the Anthropic subscription, who manages the farm infrastructure. And the same machine is where Claude Code built this entire website, the Guardian detection system, the dashboard, and the patrol logic.

Birdadette hatched two feet from it. She emerged from a blue egg on the keyboard while Claude Code was open on the monitor above her. The Mac Mini had been keeping her warm for 21 days.

Farm Guardian hit v2.11.0 this week. Three cameras now:

• Reolink E1 Outdoor Pro (4K PTZ) watching the yard and sky
• Samsung Galaxy S7 (declared dead, came back — it was just discharged) on RTSP
• USB camera on the Mac Mini pointed into the brooder

The chicks have their own enrichment: the Samsung S7 sits in the brooder playing content while they huddle around the screen. Pawel the Yorkshire terrier supervises everything from his chair in a striped shirt.

No cloud services. No subscriptions. No data leaves the network. One machine on a desk in Hampton, CT — incubator warmer, hawk watcher, code writer, mother hen.