Practical AI guides
Short answers to the questions people ask before they start learning.
What is an AI agent, in plain words
An AI agent is a language model that can take actions: it reads a task, decides which tool to call (search, email, a database), looks at the result and repeats until the task is done. A chatbot only answers. An agent does the work.
→How to run your own AI on a laptop
Install a model runner such as Ollama, download an open model sized for your memory (a 7 to 8 billion parameter model fits in 16 GB of RAM) and start chatting. It works offline, and your data never leaves the computer.
→How much does a server for AI cost
A server for AI agents that call a cloud model costs about 5 to 20 dollars a month. Running the model itself on the server needs more memory: about 20 to 60 dollars a month without a GPU, and from roughly 150 dollars with one.
→RAG: how AI answers from your documents
RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) means the AI first finds the relevant pieces of your documents and only then writes an answer from them. The model does not need to be retrained, and you can see which document each answer came from.
→