Zach Adams Effect channel avatar

Zach Adams Effect

AI · tech · security — without the spin

New episodes every week — the show behind these setups. 166K+ following on X · 50+ episodes and counting.

5.0 ★ from 8 verified sessions

Tell your computer what you want.
It builds it for you.

I'm Zach Vorhies. Eight years as an engineer at Google and YouTube, and in 2019 I walked 950 pages of internal documents out the door because I saw what centralised AI does to information. Now I run frontier-class models on machines I own — and I set up the same thing on yours. Your data stays in your building. You stop paying per word.

60 minutes · 1:1 on your machine · decentralise your AI

Zach Vorhies
★★★★★
"There is Before Zach, and After Zach."
166K+ follow him on X
13,000+ commits as FastLED's lead contributor
8.5 yrs at Google & YouTube
950 pages leaked to the DOJ
What you walk away with

By the end of the hour, this is running on your machine

Open-source models. An agent that answers to you. Nothing leaving your building — this is what decentralised actually looks like.

zach@local — boot sequence
TALOS
PLAN. REASON. BUILD.
RUST-POWERED AGENT.
> Initializing systems...
> Loading toolchains...
> Reasoning online...
> Autonomy engaged.
> TALOS READY.
Run it from anywhere

You drive it with your voice — from your phone, with your computer closed

You don't have to be sitting at the machine. Send it a voice note from the supermarket, the site office or the car. It does the work on your own computer while you're away — and it's finished by the time you're back.

  • Voice notes, not typing — say it the way you'd say it to a person
  • Works from your phone, anywhere, on your own machine at home
  • Telegram, or whichever messenger you already use
  • Nothing routes through a cloud you don't control

"AgentBot4, while I'm away, figure out how to download and configure ProtonMail on my laptop and pin it to my freaking taskbar. And when I get back, guess what? It was done."

ToddCo-host, Decentralize TV
🛡️
AgentBot4
online · running on your machine
While I'm away — download and configure ProtonMail on my laptop and pin it to the taskbar. 0:12 · voice note
On it. Give me ten minutes. 2:41 PM
Downloading and verifying the package… 2:43 PM
Configuring your account and mail rules… 2:49 PM
✅ Done. ProtonMail is installed, configured, and pinned to your taskbar. 2:52 PM

An agency charges $300–$500 an hour and won't start under $40,000.

I do the same work solo, in hours, starting at $200 — and you keep the machine, the setup and the knowledge afterwards.

Three ways to work with me

Pick how far you want to go

Same hour, same hands-on setup. The difference is how much of your setup I build for you.

The Bootcamp
$200
one hour · 1:1 on your machine

We set up an agent on your own machine with an open-source model. I walk you through every step. You leave with a working AI setup like the pros have.

  • ✓Install and configure your agent — Windows or Linux
  • ✓The right open-source model for your actual work
  • ✓Cheap inference so you're not paying frontier prices for routine jobs
  • ✓Phone control — message or voice, even when your computer is closed
  • ✓Safety guardrails — what it may do, and what it must ask you first
  • ✓Skill packs, auto-launch and exported setup notes
Book your hour — $200

🎁 Your $200 comes off the Deep Dive if you upgrade within 14 days.

The Full Stack
$1,200
four hours · three machines · 90 days support

For when this stops being a tool and starts being infrastructure. We map how you actually work, set up every machine you own, build the skill packs that replace your repetitive tasks, and I stay available for a quarter.

  • ✓Everything in the Deep Dive
  • ✓Four hours of 1:1 across two sessions
  • ✓Three machines configured — desktop, laptop, work machine
  • ✓Six custom skill packs built for your workflow
  • ✓Hardware buying plan — what to buy at your budget, and what to skip
  • ✓90 days of Telegram support
  • ✓Three monthly check-in calls as the models change
  • ✓Team setup — up to three people on their own machines
4 hrs of 1:1 @ $200/hr$800
Three machines configured$400
Six custom skill packs$500
Hardware buying plan$150
90 days Telegram support$450
Three monthly check-ins$300
Bought separately$2,600
You pay $1,200 · you save$1,400
Book the Full Stack — $1,200

⏳ Two Full Stack slots a month. It's four hours plus a quarter of support, and I still have a day job.

Opening soon · founding members first

The room where this keeps going

One hour a week, live, with me. The models I'm actually running, the agents I build for clients before anyone else sees them — and a security desk nobody else in this space is running. Decentralised AI, kept working.

$197/month
founding members $147/mo — locked for life
or $1,970/year — two months free
52 live hours a year with me. At my session rate that's $10,400 of my time — for $197 a month.
🎙️

Weekly live sessions

One hour, live, every week. One big topic taught properly, then your questions. Replays archived so you never miss one.

📈

Trending topics, up to date

What shipped this week, what got cheaper, what to ignore. Posted in the room as it happens — not a monthly newsletter.

🧠

Model analysis — use what I use

The models I'm actually running, why I picked them, what they cost me, and when to switch. Same setup, no guesswork.

🖥️

Hardware and cost guidance

What to buy at your budget, what to skip, and what the same job costs on rented inference. The numbers, not the marketing.

🤖

Early access to Zach-built agents

The agents I build for business clients, released to members first — before they go public, and often before they're finished.

🛡️ The Security Desk

AI is finding the zero-days now. Almost nobody is telling you what to do about them.

Vulnerabilities are being discovered by machines faster than human teams can patch them — and the offensive side always moves first, because finding a hole is a search problem while fixing one is a coordination problem. Most people hear about it weeks late, from a headline, with no idea whether it touches them.

This is the part I actually care about. I worked on Chrome internals at Google, and I know exactly what it looks like when a system decides what you're allowed to see. So when something breaks, you get it here — early, in plain language, and filtered down to what matters for your setup.

Zero-days as they land

AI-discovered vulnerabilities in PHP, NGINX and everything downstream. You hear it the day it breaks — not three weeks later from a news site.

What it means for your stack

Not a CVE feed. Which of your systems are actually exposed right now, how urgent it really is, and the one thing to do about it tonight.

Guardrail audits

The safety architecture around your agents — what they're allowed to touch, what must ask you first, and where prompt injection gets in through the documents they read.

Model and supply-chain risk

Which models, plugins and packages are trustworthy, which quietly exfiltrate your data, and how to tell the difference before you install them.

The privacy case, technically

What actually leaves your machine when you use a cloud model, what doesn't, and why running your own is a security control rather than a hobby.

Agent failure modes

What goes wrong when an agent gets write access — the irreversible actions, the silent errors, the loops that burn money — and how to fence them off properly.

Eight years inside Google and YouTube. Chrome browser internals. 950 pages disclosed to the Department of Justice. I've been on the wrong end of an organisation that didn't want something public — so I don't treat this part lightly.

Get on the founding list Founding price locks in for as long as you stay subscribed. Cancel any time.
What people say afterwards

Eight sessions. Eight five-star reviews.

★★★★★

"Fucking do it! Just get on and fucking do it! There is Before Zach, and After Zach. It's approximately 19 hours After Zach helped me complete set-up, and I have to remind myself to eat and sleep — it's extraordinary. I know kung fu."

EdVerified session · Oct 2026
★★★★★

"Jail broke me from Claude's sandbox. I had no idea that I was held captive by their servers."

Paul C.Verified session · Oct 2026
★★★★★

"He walked me through setting up the agent on my Windows computer, configuring OpenRouter with DeepSeek Flash for cost-effective execution, and linking Telegram bots for mobile and desktop control. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND any course or consultation offered by Zach."

Robert G.Verified session · Oct 2026
Zach Vorhies speaking at a conference
Ex-Google · Ex-YouTube
Who you're working with

I've spent a career getting big software onto constrained hardware.

I was a software engineer at Google from 2008, then a senior engineer at YouTube from 2016, where I helped scale the embedded app into billions of homes. Before that I did AI engineering at LucasArts. Google Earth into Audi's in-car navigation; YouTube onto TVs and game consoles.

In 2019 I leaked 950 pages of Google's internal documents to the Department of Justice and testified to the Texas Senate about how ranking systems steer what people believe. I wrote a book about it. That's why I run models on my own hardware today — not ideology, because I've seen what happens when the only copy of the intelligence sits in a building you don't control.

Today I'm the lead contributor to FastLED — 13,000 commits and counting — and I build Rust tooling and local AI infrastructure. I automated an entire engineering department: we used to have a dev team, now we have an AI dev team. I run a weekly AI show, and I set up these exact systems on other people's machines every week.

Google · 2008–2013 YouTube · 2016–2019 FastLED lead maintainer Rust · C++ · embedded · Linux Local AI & inference Author, Google Leaks
Before you book

The questions everyone asks

Why is the Deep Dive more than double the Bootcamp?

Because it isn't just time. It's a second machine, three skill packs built for your job, your model routing table, a written playbook, and me on Telegram for a month. Bought separately that's $1,200 — you pay $550.

Can I just book two Bootcamps instead?

You can, and it'd cost $400 — but you'd get two hours of my time and none of the rest. No second machine, no skill packs, no routing table, no month of support. Most people who try that come back for the Deep Dive.

Which one should I pick?

Never done this before? The Bootcamp. Done it and it's sitting unused? The Deep Dive — that's the exact problem it solves. Running a business, or more than one machine? The Full Stack.

I'm not technical. Is this for me?

If you can install software, yes. I do the work on your machine while you watch and I explain everything in plain language. One customer came in having spent months on ChatGPT projects that still weren't working; she left with four self-learning agents she can drive from her phone.

Will this work on my computer?

Depends on your hardware, and hardware is genuinely the hard part. One tip from a customer that makes a real difference: have your accounts set up beforehand, make sure your system is updated, and check your RAM against the manufacturer's spec. Do that and you'll get far more out of the session.

Do you do this for businesses?

Yes — the Full Stack covers a team of three. For a full business deployment, that's a separate scoped engagement starting with a two-hour scoping session. Book a Deep Dive and tell me what you need; I'll tell you honestly if it's worth building.

Is this political?

No. This is a technical service about AI models, hardware and inference economics. If you want the censorship and Big Tech material, that's on X — different room.

Anyone can download a model. Knowing which one to run is the whole game.

Start at $200. Upgrade to the Deep Dive within 14 days and your $200 comes off. Either way, you'll be running your own AI by the end of the week.

Book your hour — $200