IPE: How to Build Your Own AI Command Center

Is This Guide For You?

Quick check:

You’re ready if:

• You use a computer daily for work or personal tasks
• You know how to create folders and move files around
• You’ve downloaded and installed apps before
• You’re willing to spend 20-30 minutes learning something new
• You have a use case in mind (organizing documents, trip planning, research, etc.)

You might want to wait if:

• You typically ask someone else to install software for you
• “File management” sounds stressful
• You prefer tools that “just work” without any setup

No judgment either way. This guide is for people comfortable with computers who want to take their AI usage to the next level. If that’s not you today, bookmark this. The tools are getting easier every month.

The Big Idea

What if you had a personal assistant that:

• Had access to all your files: your documents, your preferences, your recurring tasks
• Held your entire context in mind throughout a session
• Could help you organize, plan, research, and create
• Worked alongside you in natural language, not complex commands

This isn’t sci-fi or “someday” stuff. It’s called an IPE (Integrated Personal Environment), and you can get started today, for free, with tools that already exist.

What is an IPE?

The term “IDE” (Integrated Development Environment) has been around for decades. It’s the software developers use to write code. Think Visual Studio Code, the world’s most popular code editor.

But something fundamental has changed. These tools now have AI built in. And that AI can do far more than write code.

The IPE is what happens when you use these AI-powered tools for… everything:

Traditional IDE	The New IPE
Writing code	Managing your life
Debugging software	Organizing documents
Building apps	Planning trips
For developers only	For everyone

The “Development” in IDE becomes… whatever you want to develop. Your estate plan. Your home inventory. Your family’s medical records. Your next vacation.

What Can You Actually Do With This?

Here’s a taste of what people are using IPEs for:

Life Administration

• Estate planning and document organization
• Tax prep and receipt tracking
• Subscription and warranty management
• Medical records and appointment scheduling

Home Management

• Home contents inventory (invaluable for insurance!)
• Maintenance schedules and contractor contacts
• Smart home documentation
• Renovation planning and budgeting

Creative Projects

• Writing books, blogs, articles
• Creating presentations (this article was written in an IPE!)
• Research compilation and note-taking
• Course creation and curriculum planning

Family Organization

• Recipe collections with meal planning
• Family history and genealogy
• School documents and kids’ activities
• Gift tracking and event planning

Travel & Events

• Trip itineraries with all confirmations in one place
• Packing lists that remember your preferences
• Event coordination and guest management
• Bucket list tracking and research

Financial Planning

• Budget tracking and analysis
• Investment research compilation
• Bill payment schedules
• Financial goal tracking

The key insight: your AI assistant has access to everything in this workspace. Ask it about that plumber’s receipt from six months ago. It can find it instantly. Ask it when the car registration is due. It can look it up. Ask it to draft a packing list based on your last three trips. Done.

The Secret Weapon: Your Context File

Here’s what separates an IPE from just “chatting with AI.”

When you use ChatGPT or Claude on the web, every conversation starts fresh. The AI has no memory of your life, your preferences, or your previous conversations.

An IPE is different. At the heart of it is a context file: a simple text document that tells your AI assistant everything it needs to know about you.

Example: A Life Management Context File

# My Personal AI Assistant

## About Me
- Name: Sarah Chen
- Location: Austin, TX (Central Time)
- Family: Married to Mike, two kids (Emma 12, Jack 9)

## What I Track Here
- Home inventory for insurance
- Family medical records & appointments
- Tax documents & receipts
- Home maintenance schedule
- Travel planning

## My Preferences
- Communication style: Casual, use bullet points
- Organization: Year/Month folders for dated items
- Always ask before deleting anything
- Flag anything time-sensitive

## Important Recurring Dates
- Property tax due: January 31, July 31
- HVAC filter change: Every 3 months (Mar/Jun/Sep/Dec)
- Car registration: March (both cars)
- Kids' school registration: February

## How I Name Files
- Receipts: YYYY-MM-DD_vendor_amount.pdf
- Medical: YYYY-MM-DD_person_provider_type.pdf
- Contracts: YYYY-MM-DD_company_description.pdf

With this file in place, every conversation has context. You can say:

“Add the plumber receipt from yesterday. It was $285 for fixing the kitchen faucet.”

And your AI assistant knows exactly where to put it (2025/12/2025-12-07_plumber_285.pdf) and might even remind you to update your home maintenance log.

This is the magic. The AI becomes a true assistant that knows your world.

Your First IPE in 20 Minutes (Free!)

Let’s build your first IPE right now. No server needed. No credit card. Just your laptop or PC.

Step 1: Download Cursor (5 minutes)

Go to cursor.com and download the app. It’s free.

Why Cursor? It’s designed specifically for AI collaboration with the AI built right in. No extensions or API keys to configure. Install it, sign in, and the AI chat panel is already wired up.

(Advanced users: VS Code and Google’s Project IDX also work great. But for your first IPE, Cursor has the lowest friction.)

Don’t be intimidated by the interface. Yes, it looks like a “developer tool” with dark colors and a file tree. But you’ll only use three things:

1. The folder panel on the left (your files)
2. The main area (where you view/edit files)
3. The AI chat panel (where the magic happens)

Ignore everything else for now.

Step 2: Create Your Workspace (2 minutes)

1. Create a folder on your computer. Call it something like My-IPE or Life-HQ or Command-Center
2. Open your chosen IDE
3. Go to File → Open Folder and select your new folder

That’s it. You now have a workspace.

Step 3: Create Your Context File (5 minutes)

1. Right-click in the folder panel → New File → name it ASSISTANT.md
2. Copy the template from above and paste it in
3. Customize it with YOUR information
4. Save the file (Ctrl+S or Cmd+S)

What’s an .md file? It’s just a plain text file. The “.md” stands for “Markdown,” a simple way to format text. You could open this file in Notepad or TextEdit if you wanted. There’s no vendor lock-in. Your files are always yours, in a format any computer can read.

Step 4: Start a Conversation (3 minutes)

In Cursor, press Cmd+L (Mac) or Ctrl+L (Windows) to open the AI chat panel. Or click the chat icon in the sidebar.

Start with something simple:

“Hi! I’ve set up this workspace to manage [your use case]. Can you read my ASSISTANT.md file and confirm you understand my preferences?”

The AI will read your context file and respond. Congratulations. You have an IPE.

Try This First: The Receipt Test

Before building out your whole system, try this quick test to see the IPE in action:

1. Drop 3 recent receipts (PDFs, photos, whatever) into your IPE folder
2. Ask the AI: “Look at these receipts. Rename them using the format YYYY-MM-DD_vendor_amount.pdf and create a simple markdown table logging the date, vendor, amount, and category for each.”
3. Watch it propose the renames and create a receipt-log.md file
4. Review and approve the changes

If that works smoothly, you’ll immediately see the value. If it hallucinates or struggles, you’ve only invested 5 minutes. And if it proposes something wrong? Just say “no, actually…” and correct it. The AI learns from your feedback in that conversation.

How Does This Actually Work?

Before we go further, let’s clear up the three questions everyone asks:

“How do files get INTO my IPE?”

Several ways:

1. Drag and drop: Drag a PDF from your desktop into the folder panel. Done.
2. Copy/paste: Copy files from anywhere on your computer into your IPE folder.
3. The AI creates them: Say “Create a new file for tracking home appliances” and it will create the file for you.
4. You type directly: Click “New File,” type your content, save.

Your IPE folder is just a regular folder on your computer. Anything you put there, the AI can see and work with.

“Can the AI actually DO things? Or just talk?”

Yes, and this is where the IPE shines.

Web-based AI (ChatGPT, Claude.ai) can connect to external services like Google Drive, Notion, or GitHub. But each integration is separate, requires permissions, and lives in their ecosystem.

The IPE approach is different: everything lives in one folder on your computer.

• Drag any file into your folder and it’s instantly available to the AI
• AI creates, edits, renames, and organizes files directly
• No integration setup, no permissions, no service limits
• Works with PDFs, images, text files, spreadsheets, anything
• Scales to thousands of files (though for very large archives, you’ll want to point the AI at specific folders due to context limits)
• Your data stays under YOUR control

When you say “Add the TV to my home inventory,” the AI doesn’t just tell you what to do. It actually creates the file, in the right folder, with the right format. You approve the change, and it’s done.

Think of it this way: Web AI is like having an assistant who can access specific apps you’ve authorized. An IPE is like having an assistant sitting at your desk, with full access to your filing cabinet.

“Where does my data go? Is this private?”

Your files stay on your computer. The IPE folder is just a local folder. Nothing is uploaded anywhere unless you choose to sync it (like with Dropbox).

But here’s the nuance: When you ask the AI about a file, the AI needs to read that file to answer. So while the file lives on your computer, its contents are sent to the AI provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google) to process your request. This is the same as pasting text into ChatGPT on the web.

What this means practically:

• For low-stakes use cases (trip planning, recipes, home inventory): Don’t worry about it.
• For sensitive information (medical records, financial details): Consider what you’re comfortable sharing with an AI service. Most providers don’t train on your data, but check their privacy policies.
• For business/NDA content: Keep work documents in a separate workspace from personal files.
• For maximum privacy: Run a local LLM (like Ollama, LM Studio, or llama.cpp) that processes everything on your machine. Nothing leaves your computer. Setup is more technical, but it’s fully private.

Also note: The AI proposes changes, but you approve them. It won’t rename or delete files without showing you what it plans to do first.

Bottom line: Your files live locally. File contents are sent to AI providers when you ask about them, unless you run a local model.

Step 5: Start Building Your System

Create some folders for your use case:

My-IPE/
├── ASSISTANT.md          ← Your context file
├── finances/
│   ├── 2025/
│   │   ├── receipts/
│   │   └── taxes/
├── home/
│   ├── inventory/
│   ├── maintenance/
│   └── warranties/
├── medical/
│   ├── emma/
│   ├── jack/
│   └── adults/
└── travel/
    └── 2025/

Then just… talk to your assistant:

“I need to add our new TV to the home inventory. Samsung 65-inch, bought at Costco for $899 on December 1st, 2025. 2-year warranty.”

Watch it create the right file, in the right place, with the right format. (Fair warning: my first few attempts had the AI creating files in weird places. I learned to be more specific about folder structure in my context file. Now it nails it every time.)

What’s Next? (When You Outgrow Local)

Your local IPE is powerful. Use it for weeks or months. Get comfortable.

When you’re ready for more (access from any device, always-on availability, collaboration with family), you can move your IPE to a cloud server. That’s a topic for Part 2 of this guide. For now, focus on building the habit locally.

Choosing Your AI Partner

The IPE is just the environment. The AI is the intelligence. Here are your main options:

AI	Free Tier	Paid Tier	Best For
Claude (Anthropic)	Limited daily use	$20/mo (Pro)	Long documents, nuanced reasoning
Gemini (Google)	Generous free tier	$20/mo (Advanced)	Research, Google integration
GPT (OpenAI)	Limited	$20/mo (Plus)	General purpose, most popular

Starting recommendation: Use whatever free tier is built into your chosen IDE. Project IDX includes Gemini free. Cursor includes multiple models. VS Code has various free extensions.

You’ll hit limits eventually. Maybe the AI says “I’ve reached my limit for today” or responses slow down during busy times. When that starts happening regularly, that’s when you decide if this workflow is worth $20/month to you. If it saves you even a couple hours a month, it probably is.

The Bigger Picture

For decades, powerful software tools were the domain of specialists. You needed to learn complex interfaces, memorize commands, understand technical concepts. I lived that for 20 years with my server.

The IPE changes the equation. The interface is conversation. The commands are sentences. Your AI assistant handles the organizational burden so you can focus on what matters.

Your estate plan still needs your decisions. But the AI can track the deadlines and remind you when policies need updating. Your trip still needs your taste. And the AI can research options and compile itineraries that match your style.

I also use it to help with our WordPress install on the same server since my IPE co-exists with the entire tech stack. Claude Code can check configs, upload files and even do boring maintenance like cleaning up WordPress tags and category organization.

Another idea: you can even have your AI partner create scripts to email you reminders, trip itins, etc. All of this is possible because at the heart of the IPE is the coding IDE such as Cursor, VS Code (the original by Microsoft) or the new kid on the block, Antigravity (Google).

Essentially it’s a thinking partner that can always get back to the details and doesn’t take breaks (though I recommend you do!).

MORE Human and Machine:

You can follow along as we explore this further as part of Loni Stark’s broader Human-AI Symbiosis over on the new StarkMind web site

Getting Started Checklist

• Download Cursor from cursor.com (free)
• Create a folder called “My-IPE” on your computer
• Open Cursor → File → Open Folder → select your folder
• Create ASSISTANT.md with the template above
• Customize it with your information
• Press Cmd+L (Mac) or Ctrl+L (Windows) to open AI chat
• Ask it to read your context file
• Create your first subfolder and add your first real file
• Start talking naturally and see what happens

Resources

• Cursor Download: cursor.com — Recommended for intermediate users
• VS Code: code.visualstudio.com — The classic (requires extension setup)
• Antigravity: idx.google.com — Google’s option with Gemini built-in
• IPE Concept Paper: StarkMind.ai
• Context File Templates: (coming soon)
• Part 2: Cloud IPE Guide: (coming soon)