Building in Public

The Workshop Log

Every week I write down what I built. This is the whole story of NEURA, from the first hardware decision to a desk robot that listens, talks, and makes faces at you. Pick a week.

Week 17July 24, 2026

Ready for the Camera

Polish week before filming: hands-free voice control, video on the round face, gated movement, 37 expressions, and self-view vision.

Read the log →
Week 16July 17, 2026

Making It Hear and Speak

NEURA can finally hear and speak: local transcription out, ElevenLabs in, and the first real answer out loud.

Read the log →
Week 15July 10, 2026

The Robot Wakes Up

The whole NEURA brain finally runs on the physical robot, booting to a round wakeable face that restarts itself.

Read the log →
Week 14July 3, 2026

Never Going Silent

This week NEURA got an offline brain, a circuit breaker, and a rule floor so it never goes silent.

Read the log →
Week 13June 26, 2026

Personality and a Smarter Brain

This week NEURA stopped being a chat window and became something with attitude, memory, and hands.

Read the log →
Week 12June 19, 2026

Neura Cloud, Part Two

Finished the optional cloud backend: a cloud brain on your own keys, a real-time phone-to-bot relay, and a hard security review.

Read the log →
Week 11June 12, 2026

Neura Cloud, Part One

This week I started the optional cloud layer for NEURA, beginning with accounts and an encrypted vault for your keys.

Read the log →
Week 10June 5, 2026

Neura in Your Pocket

This week NEURA left the desk and moved into my pocket, same face and personality, backed by home.

Read the log →
Week 9May 29, 2026

The Nervous System

This week NEURA stopped being only software and started reaching toward a body, one careful contract at a time.

Read the log →
Week 8May 22, 2026

Teaching It to Act, Not Just Talk

The week NEURA stopped just answering and started acting: a local skills system, plus split robot and computer modes.

Read the log →
Week 7May 15, 2026

Giving Neura a Face and a Voice

This was the week NEURA stopped feeling like a program and started feeling like someone I know.

Read the log →
Week 6May 8, 2026

Pitch, Jira, and the Final Design Doc

The pitch, a Jira roadmap, and a final design doc that surfaced hidden gaps and handed me a clear map.

Read the log →
Week 5May 1, 2026

Building Toward OpenClaw Security

This week was about locking down how community skills run, so extending NEURA never means opening a hole.

Read the log →
Week 4April 24, 2026

Upgrading the AI Layer with Ollama

This week I made NEURA model agnostic, so it can reach for the best cloud brain or run private and local.

Read the log →
Week 3April 17, 2026

Locking In the Architecture

The unglamorous week I gave NEURA a clean monorepo and a real split between its brain and front end.

Read the log →
Week 2April 10, 2026

Shipping the Core Engine

The week NEURA stopped being diagrams and notes and turned into a real engine I could open and run.

Read the log →
Week 1April 3, 2026

Picking the Hardware and the Stack

Week one is all decisions: what NEURA is, and the Raspberry Pi and round screen it will run on.

Read the log →