The Factory FAQ^{[via Lx7.ca]}

The Factory is an AI makerspace for musing & collaboration. Think of it as a local makerspace, but for intelligence. It's shared access to expensive GPU compute, curated membership, and a community of practitioners who learn from each other. We're building a sovereign compute alternative to cloud APIs that are subject to rate limits, policy changes, and data extraction.

Most people using ChatGPT or Claude are doing one-off queries. Factory members have ongoing creative partnerships with the LLM as a muse, a helper, a peer. The Factory isn't just GPU access—it's collaborative capacity. You get private, sovereign access to AI without rate limits, interruptions, or data extraction.

The Factory is located on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. Your prompts never leave the island, ensuring complete privacy and sovereignty over your data and conversations.

We run 70B-class open source models exclusively. Each quarter, the community votes on the main model to load. We also maintain a rotating smaller "guest model" for experimentation. This ensures you're always working with the best open source models available, without compromise or quantization.

The Factory membership is $100/month. But here's the key: you're not renting GPU time. The $100/month is for collaborative capacity—the space to think and build together with a curated community. You're paying for ongoing creative partnerships, not compute hours.

You need to apply for membership. The application asks what you're looking to collaborate around. We're not vetting for skill level or project worthiness—we're curating a community where the conversation is the value. We're looking for people who will work within The Factory as creative partners, not just as compute endpoints.

Factory members are:

• Creators who need a thinking partner for their projects
• Researchers who want to explore ideas without constraints
• Builders who use AI as a collaborator, not just a tool
• People who ship—not tire-kickers

If you're building ideas and not seeing people online sharing the same vibe, or looking for that gut-check community, we're here.

Access to:

• 70B-class open source models (community-voted each quarter)
• Private chat interface (Open WebUI)
• Multiple ongoing conversations
• File upload and RAG capabilities
• A community of peers doing real work
• No token counting, no rate limits, no data extraction

No long-term contracts. This isn't like a gym membership where you're getting dinged month after month even when you don't go. It's a local spot to meet, plan, and get stuff done. You can cancel anytime.

You can access The Factory through multiple interfaces:

• Web interface (Open WebUI)
• Mobile app
• API access

Once your membership is approved, you'll receive detailed instructions on how to connect.

No token counting, no rate limits, no data extraction. Use what you need without limits. If you saturate the bandwidth, we'll notice and manage it. We're not counting tokens or enforcing arbitrary limits—we want you to collaborate freely.

Yes! You can upload your text files, external chatlogs, and build your own knowledge RAG. The AI learns your domain without extracting your data. This allows you to build proprietary tools and knowledge bases that remain completely private.

Every quarter, members vote on the main 70B-class model to load for the community. This democratic approach ensures the community gets to choose the best available open source model. Your compute, your choice.

Your prompts never leave Vancouver Island. We don't log conversations or train on your data. Your privacy is fundamental to our sovereignty thesis. When your prompts never leave the island, you can work on sensitive projects without worrying about data extraction, explore controversial ideas without policy enforcement, build proprietary tools without feeding someone else's training data, and collaborate freely without surveillance.

The next decade belongs to those who own their compute. Cloud APIs are convenient, but they're also subject to rate limits, policy changes, and data extraction. The Factory offers an exit—a sovereign alternative where you control your compute and your data.

No. We don't log conversations or text artifacts. Everything is stored locally and remains private to you. No data extraction, no training on your data, no surveillance.

With private, sovereign access to AI, you can:

• Jam on Strategy: Work through ideas in real-time. Build on each other's thinking. No rate limits, no interruptions.
• Hold Context: Multiple ongoing conversations. Your LLM remembers your projects, your style, your goals across sessions.
• Build Knowledge: Upload your text files and build your own knowledge RAG. The AI learns your domain without extracting your data.
• Think Out Loud: Half-formed ideas welcome. The messy middle is where the work happens. No judgment, no data harvesting.

Yes! You can maintain multiple ongoing conversations simultaneously. Your LLM remembers your projects, your style, and your goals across sessions. This allows you to work on different projects or explore different ideas without losing context.

The Factory is a community of peers doing real work. While conversations are private, you'll be part of a curated community of practitioners who learn from each other. We foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among members.

See The Factory workflow in practice:

• The Animation Loop: Frame-to-frame video generation without credit limits
• The Music Loop: Reference-based music generation for working musicians

These examples show how The Factory enables creative workflows that would be impossible with rate-limited, surveilled cloud services.

Absolutely. Many members use The Factory for commercial work, research, and proprietary projects. The privacy and sovereignty aspects make it ideal for sensitive commercial work where you don't want your data or ideas exposed to third parties.