Palanax — Writing https://www.palanax.com/writing Teardowns, cost breakdowns, and practical notes on doing AI well — including what broke. en-gb Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Cloud AI APIs vs. self-hosting: the 12-month cost math, done properly https://www.palanax.com/writing/cloud-vs-self-hosting-12-month-cost-math https://www.palanax.com/writing/cloud-vs-self-hosting-12-month-cost-math Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Engineering teardowns "Self-hosting is cheaper" and "the cloud is cheaper" are both wrong as stated. Here's the actual break-even analysis, with the variables that decide it for your situation. We built a private document assistant for a law firm in three weeks. Here's what broke. https://www.palanax.com/writing/private-document-assistant-law-firm-what-broke https://www.palanax.com/writing/private-document-assistant-law-firm-what-broke Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Build in public The honest version. What we scoped, what we got wrong, the retrieval problem that ate two days, and what we'd do differently next time. What it actually costs to run an open model on your own hardware https://www.palanax.com/writing/cost-to-run-open-model-on-your-hardware https://www.palanax.com/writing/cost-to-run-open-model-on-your-hardware Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Engineering teardowns We put Llama and Qwen on three hardware setups — a £600 mini-PC, a single used GPU, and a rented cloud instance — and measured throughput, latency, and cost per million tokens. Here's the real math, including where self-hosting stops making sense. The three AI projects every professional-services firm should do first (and the two they shouldn't) https://www.palanax.com/writing/three-ai-projects-professional-services-should-do-first https://www.palanax.com/writing/three-ai-projects-professional-services-should-do-first Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Practical adoption We've had the same conversation with enough law and accounting firms to know where the money is — and where it's quietly wasted. A prioritized list, with the reasoning. Your team is already pasting client data into ChatGPT. Here's what to do this week. https://www.palanax.com/writing/shadow-ai-what-to-do-this-week https://www.palanax.com/writing/shadow-ai-what-to-do-this-week Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Doing it safely Shadow AI isn't a future risk; it's happening in your office right now. A calm, practical playbook — the five-step version you can start today, before you spend a rupee or a pound on tooling.