The Seed is an open-source food system: fish and plants in one loop, in a unit about the size of a shipping container, with every plan, parts list, line of code and dataset published so anyone can build one. Gold’s Honey is building the first one with partners. This page is the computing side of it.
HKOS is the brain of a Seed. The rest of the Seed is water, fish, plants, pumps and a container. HKOS is what watches it, remembers it, and helps the people running it understand it.
What HKOS does in a Seed
Runs the loop. An open-source controller reads the sensors and drives the pumps, heaters and lights. It comes with a simulator and tests, so the software can be worked on before any hardware exists.
Remembers. Every reading, every change, every note from the person tending it lands in that Seed’s own memory, on its own hardware. Not in a cloud account, and not as training data for somebody else’s model.
Reasons locally. The plan is a small model on a local computer cluster that answers questions about this system from its own record, and says so when its record isn’t enough. Reaching for a bigger model is a choice the owner makes, not the default.
Gets metered like everything else. Computing uses power too. One of the Seed’s open questions is whether the automation is worth what it costs to run, so the cluster sits on an energy meter like every pump and light.
Why local
The Seed publishes its data on purpose, and anyone can reuse it. HKOS is what makes that a decision instead of a side effect: raw data stays on the unit, and what goes out is what the people running it choose to publish. The same rule holds for a Seed in a school, on a farm, or in a backyard.
The longer argument is on HKOS, and the architecture is on The Cortex.
Where it stands
- HKOS runs today on my own hardware. It’s the brain you can watch on the homepage: notes, decisions and build sessions in one memory, with a local assistant I talk to every day. The machines it runs on are already on wall-power meters.
- Node Zero is being rebuilt as the Seed’s first bench loop. The 30-gallon home pilot is shut down. Over the next couple of months it comes back as step one of the Seed: a desk-size tank and grow bed with open sensors and an energy meter on every load, logging to an open dashboard.
- No Seed exists yet. The bench loop is the first place HKOS runs a food system. Results get published either way, failures included.
Build it with us
If you could help make a Seed real, by bringing students, a site, build skills or funding, the partner page is at goldshoney.com/seed. Questions about the computing side can come here.