Quickstart       Modules       The local AI       Forge       Under the hood       Your data  

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One laptop. Solar power. The grid is down and the network is dead — and everything still works: the guides, the tools, the maps, and the AI.

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What this is

EMBER is a survival console for the day the internet isn't there. A single, self-contained dashboard that runs entirely on one machine: no cell service, no cloud, no CDN, no telemetry. Load it once and it caches itself; from then on it boots with the network completely dead. The only thing it ever talks to is a local LLM at localhost — model weights on your own disk, answers by firelight.

It was built against one scenario: the laptop on the table is the last computer that matters, and it's running on a solar panel. Every design decision follows from that — system fonts only, a power-frugal dark theme for OLED, zero external requests, and a knowledge base that lives in plain JavaScript files you can read with your own eyes.

The grid is optional. The knowledge isn't.

  the console
  ├─ advisor ....... a local AI (Ollama) — first aid, repairs, math, anything
  ├─ survival ...... 38 field guides: water · fire · shelter · first aid · food …
  ├─ field guide ... edible vs toxic plants & mushrooms + medication reference
  ├─ navigate ...... bearings, Naismith walking time, waypoints, offline local maps
  ├─ tools ......... scientific calculator · unit converter · field constants
  ├─ reference ..... Morse (audible) · NATO phonetic · knots · radio frequencies
  ├─ log ........... journal · supply inventory · ration planner
  ├─ power ......... solar + battery budget — is your setup sustainable?
  └─ forge ......... EMBER rewrites its own code from a plain-language prompt

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The modules

Module	What it does when the lights are out
Advisor	Chat with a local model (Ollama) about anything — triage, repairs, dosage math, navigation. Never touches the cloud.
Survival	38 searchable guides across priorities, water, fire, shelter, first aid, food, navigation, signaling, weather, security, repair, sanitation, and mindset — each printable to PDF while you still have paper.
Field Guide	Feature-based identification of edible vs toxic plants and mushrooms, with danger flags and look-alike warnings, plus a common-medication reference.
Navigate	Great-circle distance, bearing, and realistic walking time (terrain factor + Naismith ascent). Saved waypoints with an offline plot, coordinate conversion, find-north methods — and a local map mode: load any map image or scan, calibrate two known points, then tap to read live coordinates and measure. No tiles, no internet.
Tools	Scientific calculator, unit converter, and field constants.
Reference	Morse code with an audible tone trainer, NATO phonetic alphabet, essential knots, and emergency radio frequencies.
Log	Journal, supply inventory, and a ration planner — how many days of water and food are actually left.
Power	Solar + battery budgeting: whether your panel sustains your draw, and how to stretch a charge.
Forge	The self-modification bay — see below.

Survival — the guides that kill you first come first.	Field Guide — edible vs toxic, with look-alike warnings.
Navigate — Naismith-corrected ETAs with zero map tiles.	Forge — describe a change, review the diff, save to disk.

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Quickstart

Easiest (macOS): double-click serve.command. It serves the folder at http://localhost:8787 and opens your browser. Leave the little terminal window open.

Any OS:

git clone https://github.com/AllStreets/ember.git
cd ember
python3 -m http.server 8787
# open http://localhost:8787

Serving over localhost (rather than opening index.html as a file://) matters for two reasons: the service worker that makes EMBER cache itself, and the connection to the local LLM.

After the first load it caches itself — you can then open it again with no network at all.

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The local AI

Do this one-time setup while you still have internet. Afterwards the AI works forever offline — the model weights live on disk.

The Advisor talks only to a local model on this machine, never the cloud:

1. Install Ollama — a small app that runs LLMs locally.
2. Pull a capable-but-small model (pick one):

   ollama pull llama3.2         # light, fast, good default
   ollama pull qwen2.5:7b       # stronger reasoning
   ollama pull gemma2:9b        # larger, if you have the RAM

3. Ollama serves at http://localhost:11434 automatically. Reload EMBER — the sidebar LLM chip turns green.

If Ollama is running but EMBER says offline, allow the browser origin by starting Ollama with OLLAMA_ORIGINS=* (or add http://localhost:8787). You can also change the host from the Advisor's setup panel.

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Forge — the console that rewrites itself

EMBER edits its own source code from a plain-language prompt, using the same local LLM:

1. Describe a fix or a feature in plain English.
2. The local model rewrites the file; you review a proper diff.
3. Save it straight to disk (File System Access API — Chrome/Edge/Brave, folder connected once).

Every save copies the old file into _forge_backups/ first, so a bad edit from a small model is always one click from recovered. A self-test harness (forge-selftest.mjs) exercises the pipeline. It is a survival tool in the truest sense: when there is no npm, no Stack Overflow, and no other machine, the console can still patch itself.

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Under the hood

EMBER/
├─ index.html            the shell — one page, ten modules
├─ sw.js                 service worker: cache-everything, run with the network dead
├─ js/                   one module per file — advisor, survival, navigate, forge …
│  ├─ llm.js             the only network code in the app: localhost Ollama client
│  └─ store.js           localStorage persistence, 17 lines
├─ data/                 the knowledge base — guides, field guide, reference tables
│  └─ kb.js              plain JavaScript you can read and extend by hand
├─ css/app.css           the firelight theme — system fonts, zero external assets
├─ serve.command         double-click launcher (macOS)
└─ forge-selftest.mjs    self-test harness for the Forge pipeline

• No build step, no framework, no package.json. Vanilla ES modules; the source you read is the code that runs.
• Zero external requests. No CDN fonts, scripts, or images — grep the source: the only host it ever contacts is localhost.
• Power-frugal by design. Warm dark theme (kind to OLED and to eyes by firelight), system font stack, no animation-heavy chrome.
• PWA offline shell. The service worker caches every file on first load; updates are picked up when you're back online — if you ever are.

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Your data

Everything you enter — chats, waypoints, journal, supplies, settings — is stored in this browser's local storage on this device. Nothing leaves the laptop. Clearing the browser data wipes it, so keep paper backups of anything critical.

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Not a substitute for training

These guides are concise reference, not professional medical, legal, or tactical advice. Where trained help exists, use it. Practice the skills before you need them.

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MIT © 2026 Connor Evans — see LICENSE

_{Keep the fire small. Keep it lit.}