PH4‑Compute

How to read this

Work top to bottom. Steps 1 to 5 take about fifteen minutes, most of which is waiting.

What you are building

Three small programs in a row. That is genuinely the whole thing.

All three are written and tested already. You do not have to write a line of code — you copy them across, then change two plain-English files: which news sources you want, and what kind of briefing you want.

1 · Get in

Two ways in. You will use the desktop for setting up and the terminal for everything after.

The desktop

In Finder press ⌘K, enter this, and log in as jess:

vnc://ph4-compute

The terminal

Open Terminal on your Mac and run:

$ ssh jess@ph4-compute

First time only, it asks whether you trust the machine — type yes. Everything from here on is typed on the Mini, not on your own Mac.

2 · Copy the kit across

Matt has left the three programs ready for you in a shared folder. One command copies them into your account and sets up the rest:

$ cp -r /Users/Shared/agentkit ~/agents
$ mkdir -p ~/agents/output ~/agents/logs
$ echo 'export PATH="/opt/homebrew/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zprofile
$ source ~/.zprofile

You now have a folder called agents in your home directory with everything in it.

3 · Let it email you

The Mini needs permission to send mail as you. That is an app password — a long code that only works for sending email, that you can cancel at any time, and that is not your real password.

1. Create the app password

   Go to myaccount.google.com → Security → App passwords. Create one called “PH4”. Google gives you sixteen letters — copy them.

2. Store it on the Mini

   On PH4-ComputeCopy

   $ nano ~/.agent-mail      # paste it, then Control-O, Return, Control-X
   $ chmod 600 ~/.agent-mail  # now only you can read the file

3. Tell it your address

   On PH4-ComputeCopy

   $ nano ~/agents/bin/send-digest.py

   Near the top there is a line reading ADDRESS = "you@gmail.com". Change it to your own address, keeping the quote marks. Save and exit as before.

4 · Make it yours

Two plain-English files. These are the only ones you will ever really fiddle with, and neither is technical.

Which sources

$ nano ~/agents/news-digest/feeds.txt

One web address per line. It starts with BBC, the Guardian and Ars Technica. Most news sites publish one of these — search for “[site name] RSS” to find it. Delete what you do not want, add what you do.

What kind of briefing

$ nano ~/agents/news-digest/prompt.md

This is just instructions, written the way you would explain it to a person. Ask for shorter or longer, more or less serious, particular subjects emphasised. This is where you will get the most out of tinkering.

5 · Run it, then schedule it

By hand first

Never schedule something you have not watched work. Run it now:

$ ~/agents/news-digest/run.sh

It goes quiet for roughly half a minute while the model reads everything. Then check your inbox. Read what arrives critically — too long? wrong emphasis? Adjust prompt.md and run it again. Getting this right is the actual work, and it is worth three or four goes.

Then set the alarm

Once you are happy with what it sends:

$ nano ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.jess.news-digest.plist

Paste this in exactly as it is, then save:

~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.jess.news-digest.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
  "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>com.jess.news-digest</string>

  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/Users/jess/agents/news-digest/run.sh</string>
  </array>

  <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
  <dict>
    <key>Hour</key><integer>6</integer>
    <key>Minute</key><integer>45</integer>
  </dict>

  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <false/>
</dict>
</plist>

Then switch it on:

$ launchctl bootstrap gui/$(id -u) ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.jess.news-digest.plist

Done. It now runs at 6:45 every morning. To change the time, edit the Hour and Minute numbers, then run the same command with bootout in place of bootstrap, and bootstrap again.

Making more of them

Copy the folder, change the two plain-English files, give it a new name and time.

$ cp -r ~/agents/news-digest ~/agents/my-new-agent
$ nano ~/agents/my-new-agent/feeds.txt   # different sources
$ nano ~/agents/my-new-agent/prompt.md   # different instructions
$ nano ~/agents/my-new-agent/run.sh      # change NAME and DIR at the top

Then copy the schedule file too, giving it a new Label, the new path, and whatever time suits.

Ideas that suit this shape

When something goes wrong

Every run writes a log. Always look there first — the messages are written in plain English on purpose:

$ cat ~/agents/logs/news-$(date +%Y-%m-%d).log

Your briefings are saved in ~/agents/output whatever happens, so even when the email fails the work is never lost.

About the model doing the work

Worth understanding, because it is unusual and it is the reason all of this is free.

The thing writing your briefings is called Gemma, and it lives on this Mac's hard drive — about 17 GB of it. When your agent runs, nothing is sent to any company. No account, no subscription, no record anywhere of what you asked.

You can also just talk to it directly, which is handy for anything you would rather not put into a website:

$ ollama run gemma4:26b

Ask it anything, press Return. Type /bye when you are done. It cannot search the web or read your files — it only knows what you tell it in the conversation — but for drafting, thinking aloud, or working through something private, it is genuinely useful and costs nothing.

Asking it to build things for you

Everything above you set up by following instructions. This is the step where you stop needing them — you describe what you want, and something on this machine goes and builds it.

The tool is called goose. It is not a chat window: it can read your files, write new ones, run them, look at what happened, and fix its own mistakes. It runs on the same private model already on this Mac, so it is free and nothing leaves the house.

Set it up, once

$ curl -fsSL https://github.com/block/goose/releases/download/stable/download_cli.sh | CONFIGURE=false bash

Then create its settings file with nano ~/.config/goose/config.yaml and paste this in exactly:

~/.config/goose/config.yaml

GOOSE_PROVIDER: ollama
GOOSE_MODEL: qwen3-coder:30b
OLLAMA_HOST: localhost:11434
GOOSE_MODE: approve
extensions:
  developer:
    enabled: true
    name: developer
    type: builtin

If it complains that the folder does not exist, run mkdir -p ~/.config/goose first.

Start a session

$ goose session

That is it — you are in. Type what you want in plain English and press Return. It will tell you what it is doing as it goes. Type exit when you are finished.

Things worth asking it

• “Change my news agent so it sends to Telegram instead of email.”
• “Write me a script that renames every photo in this folder to the date it was taken.”
• “Read my last five briefings in ~/agents/output and tell me what I am reading too much about.”
• “Make a new agent that checks these three web pages once a day and only tells me when something changes.”

It can also run things for you and read what happened, which is what makes it worth having over a plain chat — ask it to write a script and try it, and it will come back and tell you whether it worked.

If you ever outgrow this

You may not. But it is worth knowing where the ceiling is.

The setup above is very good at one particular shape of job: here is some text, write me something about it. Summarising, condensing, drafting, pulling themes out of a pile of articles — all of that it does well and free.

What it cannot do is go and find things out. It cannot decide what to search for, follow a lead, chase a half-answer, or judge whether a source is trustworthy. If you find yourself wanting an assistant that genuinely investigates — “work out what happened with X and tell me who is right” — that is where a paid service like Claude earns its keep, and Matt can set it up alongside this.

Everything you have built stays useful either way. The fetch-and-email machinery is the same; only the middle step changes.

House rules

Cheat sheet