🛠️ AI Tools & Resources

Tools organized by Data Sovereignty Zone

The Core Rule: Public tools get public data. Enterprise tools get internal data. Secure enclaves get PHI. Never cross the streams.

🟢 Green Zone: Public Data & Context Creation

For publicly available information, literature synthesis, and creating your "Portable Context."

NotebookLM

Google's source-grounded tool. I use this to "interrogate" PDFs and generate first-draft slides/visuals. Constraint: No PHI.

Wispr Flow / Plaud Note

Consumer Voice AI. Great for dictating "Context Files" while walking. Note: Consumer cloud—no sensitive data.

Perplexity Pro

Replaces Google for 90% of my queries. Provides citations for every claim.

Claude / Gemini

General purpose reasoning. I use Claude for coding/writing (with Skills—reusable context folders that load automatically) and Gemini for multimodal tasks.

🟡 Yellow Zone: Internal IP & "The Soul"

For grant drafts, unpublished manuscripts, and sensitive logic. Data must not train public models.

Duke-licensed. Safe for internal memos and email triage. Copilot Notebooks provides source-grounded RAG (like NotebookLM)—won't pull from open web, only your uploaded documents. Word Mobile Dictation offers secure, structured dictation with custom instruction modes.

Devil's AdvocateDuke Internal

Duke's AI-powered grant proposal reviewer. Checks compliance, flags foreign components, validates citations, and provides "red team" feedback. All processing on Duke servers—never transmitted externally.

The Local-First Stack Zero Cloud Exposure

Run models entirely on your machine. Air-gapped capable. Your data never leaves your device.

Obsidian + Smart Connections — Chat with your own notes locally
LM Studio — Visual interface, supports GPT-OSS reasoning models (20B runs on 16GB MacBook)
Ollama — CLI-first runtime, fast model hot-swapping, Mac-native
AnythingLLM — Local RAG + Zoom transcription, good for meeting notes on sensitive projects

Azure AI Foundry

The sandbox for building internal tools before they go to production.

VS Code / VS Codium

Standard VS Code (Azure AI authenticated) or Codium (telemetry-free). Good for sensitive data scripts.

🔴 Red Zone: PHI / Regulated Data

For Protected Health Information (PHI). Secure enclaves only. No consumer AI tools.

📚 The Learning Feed

Where I get my signal in a noisy world. These are public resources (Green Zone) for staying current without drinking from the firehose.

AI News & Tools

Matt Wolfe — Practical tool roundups and news
Matthew Berman — Deep dives into open source models
Nate B Jones — AI Strategy and daily news
The AI Daily Brief — Essential daily summary

Knowledge Management & PKM

Tiago Forte — Building a Second Brain, PARA method, NotebookLM mastery
Nick Milo (Linking Your Thinking) — Philosophy of knowledge management
"80% of Obsidian in 15 Minutes" — Best onboarding video for the Local Stack

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