Open source AI's grassroots builders are treating closed tools as brittle defaults and local models as proof that control now matters more than polish.

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The institutional shift is that open source AI now competes on custody of the workflow, not only on model quality. That is why a small repo describing a control plane for independent AI workers belongs beside the Reddit posts about brittle data tools and old GPUs: the shared desire is auditable, local, changeable systems rather than sealed assistants. ChatGPT still anchors the comparison, but the builder class is moving the prestige contest from conversational polish to operational control.

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