A.L.E.X. · PIR®
Sustainability
How A.L.E.X. keeps running, what it costs, who owns it, and how it could be turned off, so it never depends on one person or one company.
What it runs on
| Piece | Service | Cost to PIR® |
|---|---|---|
| Commands, buttons, helpdesks, web desk | Vercel (Hobby) | Free |
| Website pages (this site, desk portals) | GitHub Pages | Free |
| Tickets | GitHub Issues & Discussions in PIR®'s organization | Free |
| Automations (deploys, syncing, channel guides) | GitHub Actions | Free |
| Always-on conversation mode (#ask-alex only) | Google Cloud e2-micro (free tier) | ~$3.65/month for its public internet address, after the trial credit ends in Jan 2027 |
| Answers (language models) | NVIDIA NIM free tier today; Claude Haiku planned | Free today; Claude only with a Tech Committee–approved monthly cap |
| Sign-in emails | PIR®'s own helpdesk@ mailbox (already part of PIR®'s web hosting), with Brevo as a backup | Free |
Today A.L.E.X. costs PIR® nothing. The one small cost ahead (about $44 a year) is covered by a member of the Tech Committee as an in-kind contribution and recorded on PIR®'s ledger for transparency. In keeping with our 7th Tradition, A.L.E.X. is supported by PIR®'s own members and takes no outside sponsorship.
Who owns it
- Hosting accounts (Vercel, Google Cloud, GitHub) are registered to PIR®-owned email addresses and organizations, and the Discord app is managed by a team of trusted servants, not one person.
- More than one trusted servant can reach each account, and keys are rotated whenever someone steps away.
- The step-by-step runbook (accounts, keys, recovery, costs) lives in the Tech Committee's private files, so the next volunteer, or their AI assistant, can pick it up.
Privacy promises that keep it sustainable
- A.L.E.X. stores no chat logs and no profiles. Ticket requesters are a scrambled tag, never a Discord ID or an email address.
- Crisis and dosing questions are caught by plain rules before any AI runs.
- Full details: the privacy notice.
How it could be turned off
- Instantly: remove the Discord app's endpoint and A.L.E.X. stops answering. Pause conversation mode with one setting.
- Completely: delete the hosting projects. Every ticket stays in GitHub, and every page and policy stays public, so nothing is lost.
Open by default
- Source of these pages and policies: github.com/psychedelicsinrecovery/alex-desk-public
- The engine: Alexandrina, reusable by other fellowships.
- What's next: the roadmap.