Modern Monticello
Program Codex
Free doesn't always mean identical. These are real, complete, professionally used tools with no subscription attached, though some have interface differences or a paid tier with extra features. Where a tool has a hands-on deep dive, it links to it in Digital.
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28 of 28 tools
Creative
Inkscape
Draws math, not pixels — paths built from nodes and curves. What the vector line art and logos on this site are actually made in.
Krita
Draws pixels on a grid, brush stroke by brush stroke. What the coloring pages and the Shaggy Dog Doodle Pad art are painted in.
FreeCAD
A flat sketch, then a feature tree of solid operations on top of it. What the parametric parts and Draft Board build blueprints run through.
GIMP
Replaces Photoshop. The real tool, free, indefinitely — though the interface has real differences from Photoshop's that take some relearning, not just a different coat of paint.
Blender
Replaces paid 3D modeling and animation software. A real, complete tool, not a stripped-down trial.
DaVinci Resolve
Replaces Premiere, real color grading included, not a stripped-down mode. The free tier is missing a handful of advanced features the paid Studio version has — most people never hit that ceiling. The standard pick for build-demo or walkthrough footage once video becomes part of the mix.
Audacity
Replaces paid audio editors. Free multi-track editing, for cleaning up narration before it goes under footage.
OBS Studio
Replaces paid screen recording and streaming tools.
VLC Media Player
Plays literally anything, no codec-pack hunting.
HandBrake
Video transcoding, free. A smaller tool than the others here, still worth knowing about.
PrusaSlicer or Cura
The slicer that turns a FreeCAD model into instructions an actual 3D printer can run. Relevant once the printer is bought.
LightBurn
The industry-standard laser control software. Not free — a one-time license, no subscription — relevant the moment a flash piece or sticker sheet is headed for a laser instead of a printer.
General Software
LibreOffice
Replaces Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The actual tool, free, indefinitely.
7-Zip
File compression, free. A smaller tool, still worth knowing about.
Scratch
Visual programming, genuinely good for a kid's first coding project.
Godot
A real, complete game engine, free instead of a revenue-share license.
Obsidian
A real notes/knowledge-base tool, free for personal use (not open source — that's the one honest asterisk here). Already in active use for the actual Lambert Brain vault, and a natural front end for any personal knowledge base that stays on your own machine.
Infrastructure
Git
Version control — every change saved as a labeled snapshot instead of overwriting the last one. Nothing leaves your machine until you push.
GitHub
A website that holds a copy of Git's snapshots online — the thing this site's own copy of the code talks to. Not self-hostable; GitLab and Gitea are the self-hosted alternatives if that ever matters more than the convenience.
Vercel
What actually ships this site. A push builds a new version; a separate step ("alias") points the public address at it — easy to forget, which is exactly why scripts/ship.mjs exists.
Supabase
Where the site remembers things — who bought what, what's behind a paywall, a saved doodle-pad picture. A real Postgres database plus login handling, free tier, genuinely self-hostable if the hosted free tier ever stops fitting.
Docker
Bundles a program with every single thing it needs to run, so it behaves identically on any machine. Why the Lambert Brain home-server install can auto-detect Docker vs. native and just work either way. Free for personal use; larger commercial use has its own licensing — doesn't affect a homestead setup.
Tailscale
A private network between only your own devices, wherever they are, without opening anything to the wider internet. What lets a phone reach Buddy at home from anywhere. Free tier covers a household. The coordination server itself isn't self-hostable — Headscale is the self-hosted answer, untried here so far.
Cloudflare
DNS (the internet's phone book) plus R2, file storage with no charge for bandwidth out. Why the Shaggy Dog art moved off a host that was charging real money to serve it.
n8n
Self-hostable workflow automation. Free to self-host; its own hosted cloud version is paid, and its license is "source available" rather than a strict open-source one — worth knowing, not a dealbreaker.
Listmonk
A self-hosted newsletter tool — a self-hosted alternative to a service like ConvertKit.
Umami
Self-hostable, cookie-free site analytics — traffic numbers without routing visitor data through Google.
Local AI
Ollama
Runs an AI model directly on your own hardware — nothing leaves the building. What Buddy and the character agents run on. The real tradeoff: a model small enough for hardware you own is weaker than the biggest cloud models, and it shows up exactly where you'd expect (a small model is more likely to state something false with total confidence).