Hi all,
We just published a preprint and open-sourced our personal agent project. Wanted to share with the research community:
**Paper:** AlterEgo: Towards the Zero-Cost Personal Agent
- DOI: [AlterEgo: Towards the Zero-Cost Personal Agent | Zenodo](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23446166)
**Code:** [GitHub - wojiadexiaoming-copy/openmuse-win: Windows本地智能体 · GitHub](https://github.com/wojiadexiaoming-copy/openmuse-win)
Core idea: A personal agent that cannot afford to stay on is not a personal agent. We argue zero marginal model cost should be a first-class design goal, and show an existence proof: a failover router multiplexing 4 free-tier LLM providers (NVIDIA, ModelScope, Zhipu, Agnes) with per-role binding and automatic fallback. Total model spend in development: $0.
The paper also includes a taxonomy of personal-agent cost models (subscription / paid-default / BYOK / allowance / free-tier failover / self-host) - the first we’re aware of.
On the execution side: Windows-native (UI Automation, screenshots, persistent Chromium) rather than Docker sandboxes or cloud VMs.
Happy to answer questions or receive feedback. The project is at an early stage and we welcome contributors.