Opportunity Intelligence for the AI Age

What follows is the gist of the architecture for how to do this.

Internalize the philosophy, refactor it and make it your own.

Then SHIP — sustainably, prayerfully. ✝️

Build Your Own Intelligence Service. Find Your Own Opportunities. Make Yourself Useful.

I. The Broken Promise of Traditional Career Development

The entire process of educating professionals for careers—built by looking in the rear-view mirror at jobs that existed 5, 10, 25, or even 50 years ago—is hopelessly and painfully broken.

This manifesto does not address the upstream failures of parenting and education systems that neglect to teach productivity, self-sufficiency, and salary negotiation from a young age. That is a topic for another manifesto.

What this manifesto addresses:

  • The philosophy behind building tools for professional skills development
  • The principles of systematic opportunity discovery
  • The urgency of replacing legacy processes with intelligence-grade methods

II. First Principles

Make yourself useful. Have no patience with those who squander resources.

Do not wait for backward-looking institutions to catch up. Instead:

  • Skip the obsolete education-to-career pipeline
  • Level up your opportunity-finding intelligence now
  • Build the tools you will need for the rest of your professional life
  • Commit to ongoing, disciplined observation with continuous improvements in how you observe
  • Cultivate a relentlessly thorough system of intelligence gathering and genuine relationship building

III. The Donovan Model: A Philosophical Foundation

Our approach modernizes the personal intelligence-gathering strategy of Major General William J. Donovan—founder of the Office of the Coordinator of Information (COI) and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor to the CIA.

Donovan maintained a vast global intelligence network through his personal contacts and his law firm's international reach. His starting point was always the same: pay attention to where the rubber hits the road—not to titles, appearances, braggadocio, or virtue signaling.

He was notoriously incapable of bluffing. That total lack of artifice was not a weakness—it was the engine of everything that followed.

IV. Five Principles of the Donovan Approach

Principle 1 — Truth Over Politics

"The best intelligence service is one that tells the truth, even when the truth is unpopular."

  • Donovan refused to tell superiors what they wanted to hear
  • Built a culture of high-integrity analysis within the OSS
  • Frequently clashed with politically minded military and FBI bureaucracies

Principle 2 — Recruit "Glorious ORDINARY Amateurs," ... but avoid drama!

  • Sought effective experts from extraordinary backgrounds—e.g. former circus performers/stuntmen, taxi drivers, even convicts.
  • Valued raw data and more data for problem-solving over espionage theatrics
  • Rejected the social deceits of diplomatic careerists and their micro-dramas.

Principle 3 — Lead from the Front, Be At The Point of Preparation For Attack

  • Most highly decorated U.S. soldier of World War I (Medal of Honor recipient)
  • Frequently visited active war zones to instruct, lead, and build courage
  • Inspired fierce loyalty as a man of action—not a desk-bound manipulator
  • His "unorthodox" and "fatherly" leadership style created agents who would follow him anywhere

Principle 4 — Innovate Expecting To Transcend Boundaries ... incur jealousies, or else.

  • Open to any idea—no matter how unconventional or "wild"
  • Rejected protocol and virtue signaling as barriers to creative solutions
  • Operating maxim: "There are no rules in intelligence except those imposed by necessity and conscience."

Principle 5 — Accept the Cost of Authenticity ... spend your capital in order to build it.

Donovan's bluntness, transparency, and fearless disregard for powerful figures carried a steep political price:

  • Targeted by rivals — J. Edgar Hoover and Douglas MacArthur relied on blackmail and subterfuge against him
  • Labeled a class traitor — Prominent Republicans in Buffalo, New York State, and the national GOP punished him for aggressively prosecuting criminal organizations without regard for political alliances
  • Political career blocked — His refusal to "play the game" thwarted repeated ambitions for public office
  • OSS disbanded by Truman — The consummate machine politician (who rose through Pendergast's Kansas City organization) viewed Donovan as a "loose cannon" and shut down the OSS—a strategic blunder that gave the USSR, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh a critical 1945–47 window to establish positions, committing the U.S. to decades of Cold War engagement

V. The Donovan Legacy

It is the MOST solid, effective, proven way to think about gathering intelligence ... there's no comparison ... other approaches that you come across show evidence of copying or adapting certain principles, most often by accident. You will want to understand the SOURCE, not the copies or high level abstractified versions of Donovan's Legacy.

Donovan, more than any other individual of his era, transformed American intelligence from a collection of fragmented, secretive cliques buried in military bureaucracies into a decentralized, data-driven, frontline institution. Obviously, this affected and benefited from practical applications by Mossad and others, but Donovan's vision is the most comprehensive and more importantly it is now available for you to study and guide your implementation of shiniest new tech.

Donovan's old school achievements—often accomplished behind enemy lines, under fire, and against relentless bureaucratic opposition through the COI and OSS—were pivotal to winning World War II. His ideas ultimately shaped everything in the intelligence world, vindicating his vision even after Truman's disastrous, hopelessly myopic mistake of disbanding OSS in September, 1945.

VI. From Donovan to OpenClaw: Building Your Sovereign Opportunity Net

You have to START WITH WHAT YOU HAVE. Donovan never tolerated yesterday's technology or yesterday's methods, but he also recognized that plans had to incorporate practical realities.

Start with what you have as you LOOK FORWARD to and intelligently incorporate a relentless philosophy of personal intelligence gathering, using the advances of the AI age, as appropriate.

The whole open source methodology and community surrounding the OpenClaw framework enables you to build a Sovereign Opportunity Net:

What it replicates:

  • Donovan's Research & Analysis (R&A) Branch → systematic, AI-augmented opportunity intelligence
  • Donovan's World Commerce Corporation (WCC) → direct, network-driven opportunity flow that bypasses mass media

What it targets:

  • Ground-truth opportunities in gig work
  • Mid-term roles beyond traditional job boards
  • Startup partnerships sourced through disciplined intelligence gathering

Transformational Discipleship Technology (TDT) – Develop In Public, Share Evangelically

No one should go bankrupt developing their skills, but developing capabilities requires expenditure of effort on things that are necessarily HARD ... it's often not the techonology itself that is hard, what is HARDEST is the process of reaching people, understanding their constraints/abilities, and helping them building something for themselves, ie perhaps self-discipline or self-control, but something that they NEED, will actually use and perfect in their own lives.

You should never spend more than you can comfortably afford or recover through productivity gains, new opportunities, or light community support ... similarly, you should never just expect that someone else will support you OR pay for your learning and growth ... there are exceptions but governments, churches, non-profits are most generally based on grift and passing the collection plate to assuage guilt ... this is why governments, churches, non-profits contribute to the covetous expectation that some hypothetical rich guy will pay it all or "tax the rich" is viable philosophy, it's not -- it's nothing but COVETOUS HATE.

You have probably learned by now that your inspiration must largely be up to you and your gratitude for everything that you have to work with, but that does not mean that you should not find inspiration in the work of others ... adapt the parts that work, you need visible daily cost tracking and aggressive optimization.

Your mileage will vary; but it's on YOU to know YOUR mileage ... the gas in your tank's not FREE ... #TANSTAAFL.

Maybe your costs will be like those cost borne by the AI enthusiast Matthew Berman which would involve a spend for developing your intelligence gathering CRM / opportunity finder that starts out at something like $134/day, then drop to $32/day in the first few days and continues, but rapidly becomes part of a self-funding influencer side-hustle.

The point of the illustrative Matthew Berman example is that as a high agency person, you are in control. That means that you must set an amount you are going to spend, eg perhaps $1000, then break down your budget and stick to your optimized budget ... then again, MAYBE are seriously broke and cannot afford even a dime or two per day or $5-10/month right now and, for a while, you just need to learn whatever can from free stuff, such as reading through Matthew Berman's explanation ... but there's no need to be completely inactive, moping the sidelines for now -- there are things to learn from.

Everything about OpenClaw and the whole OpenClaw community itself proves the model scales perfectly for time-rich, money-constrained builders: free MIT-licensed core, 100% local-first option, bring-your-own-key (or fully local models), consumer-hardware runs, and built-in cost dashboards.

Thousands of users run it for $0+ to $20/month; many self-fund via gigs, consulting, or automation revenue the project itself creates.

The playbook below is practically designed for anyone with time + internet + basic laptop [or mini PC]. Prioritize free/local tools first. Track every penny obsessively. Design so ongoing costs < value created. Share early to unlock opportunities that pay for continued growth.

This is for real humans who want to sustain their lives ... while being a disciple sustaining one's life ... serving others.

Phase 1: Mindset & Financial Stewardship Foundation (Steps 1-15)

  1. Adopt radical abundance + radical stewardship: sharing multiplies leverage; spending must never threaten your sustainability.
  2. Commit to solving your own highest-pain problems using only tools you can afford indefinitely.
  3. View the project as a “personal operating system” that must deliver ROI > cost from week 1.
  4. Decide upfront: everything shared publicly, but built on a zero-to-low-cost stack.
  5. Choose permissive license (MIT) and free hosting (GitHub).
  6. Build in public from the first working prototype — even if minimal.
  7. Set a hard personal monthly compute budget ($0–$50 max for most; never exceed without proven ROI).
  8. Define your SOUL / IDENTITY / PRD files internally, but write them to be reusable at zero extra cost.
  9. Embrace the “lobster way” with financial claws: defend your budget fiercely, keep the shell fully open.
  10. Accept TDT as discipleship for all budgets — time investment substitutes for money.
  11. Install cost-tracking as the very first feature (the agent monitors its own spending).
  12. Choose self-funding paths early: productivity gains, freelance gigs, or community tips that pay for compute.
  13. Prioritize free/local models (Ollama, LM Studio, quantized 7B–34B) before any paid API.
  14. Build a “financial council” subsystem that flags any spend outside your rules.
  15. Commit to indefinite sustainability: the system must run cheaper over time as you optimize.

Phase 2: Affordable Personal Development & Perfection (16-35)

  1. Start with fully local models on your existing hardware — zero API cost.
  2. Run the system in daily life for 30–90 days, iterating with free tools only.
  3. Build 10–20 real use cases that save you time/money, proving ROI before scaling.
  4. Include trivial universal cases (food journal, daily brief) that cost nothing.
  5. Implement multi-layer memory using local Markdown files (OpenClaw-style).
  6. Add proactive heartbeat scheduling that runs on your machine, not cloud.
  7. Integrate only tools you already own (calendar, email, browser, files).
  8. Layer security and backups using free built-in OS tools first.
  9. Test failure modes without extra spend (local logs only).
  10. Iterate until the agent feels like a true coworker — all on free stack.
  11. Build usage & cost tracking dashboard that runs locally.
  12. Create video/image pipelines using free local models or generous free tiers.
  13. Add X/Twitter ingestion via free API limits or RSS.
  14. Develop meeting-to-action automation that pays for itself in time saved.
  15. Reach the point where you cannot imagine life without it — still under budget.
  16. Optimize every prompt for token efficiency (Berman-style but free).
  17. Document every cost-saving trick you discover (quantization, caching, model routing).
  18. Create a “free tier forever” configuration as your default.
  19. Build one-click onboarding that installs everything free/local.
  20. Prove the system generates more value (time/money) than it consumes.

Phase 3: Rigorous Documentation & Packaging for Accessibility (36-50)

  1. Write timestamped video/script walking through use cases on free/local setup.
  2. Compile free eBook/PDF of 25+ use cases with zero-cost instructions first.
  3. Extract every core prompt into public Gists (exactly like Berman).
  4. Share SOUL, IDENTITY, PRD as Markdown — include budget versions.
  5. Package all configs, scripts, schemas for local-only use.
  6. Include backup/encryption instructions using free tools.
  7. Write one-click onboarding wizard that defaults to $0 spend.
  8. Document every integration with free/local alternatives listed first.
  9. Create skills/plugin template that runs without paid models.
  10. Build cost-tracking export that proves sustainability to newcomers.
  11. Write security layers and threat model — emphasize no extra cost.
  12. Produce contributor guide focused on time-rich volunteers.
  13. Record “day in the life” demo using only free stack.
  14. Create comparison table vs. closed tools, highlighting your $X/month cost.
  15. Version everything and include changelog with cost-optimization entries.

Phase 4: Strategic Open-Sourcing with Self-Funding Built-In (51-65)

  1. Push entire repo to GitHub under MIT license — zero cost.
  2. Add skill registry from day one, encouraging free community contributions.
  3. Seed 5–10 high-quality skills yourself using only free tools.
  4. Write crystal-clear README with $0 install command first.
  5. Include CONTRIBUTING.md that celebrates time donations over money.
  6. Set up free GitHub Discussions + free Discord/Telegram.
  7. Pin announcement tweet/video showing your low-cost journey.
  8. Release under real name for trust (no paid promo).
  9. Add free security scanning (VirusTotal public).
  10. Support every OS with local-first defaults.
  11. Make local models interchangeable with paid APIs.
  12. Keep data 100% local by default (no cloud lock-in).
  13. Publish full prompt-engineering guide optimized for cheap/fast models.
  14. Open memory/RAG pipeline completely, with cost examples.
  15. Tag repo for discoverability by budget-conscious builders.

Phase 5: Powerful Evangelization That Generates Opportunities (66-80)

  1. Drop announcement video + thread with timestamps and $0 setup link.
  2. Offer eBook free, no gate — include cost-saving chapter.
  3. Reply personally to first 100–200 comments (builds free relationships).
  4. Share exact Gist links and your monthly cost transparency.
  5. Encourage forking: “Make it yours for $0 extra.”
  6. Post weekly updates on your own low-cost improvements.
  7. Share “before/after” stories including dollars/time saved.
  8. Collaborate with micro-creators who run it affordably.
  9. Run free public AMAs using your local agent live.
  10. Publish transparent cost breakdowns (builds trust and disciples).
  11. Seed challenges: “Best free-tier skill wins shoutout.”
  12. Cross-post to free communities (Reddit, HN, Discords).
  13. Create Shorts of single killer low-cost use cases.
  14. Let the agent draft your next post (meta, zero cost).
  15. Celebrate milestones with new free gifts to community (not paid ads).

Phase 6: Community Discipleship & Mutual Sustainability (81-92)

  1. Treat every contributor as a co-builder — time is the currency.
  2. Merge high-quality PRs fast (even simple optimizations).
  3. Host free weekly “build with me” spaces on low-cost setups.
  4. Offer 1:1 onboarding for most engaged (via free tools).
  5. Spotlight user creations daily, especially budget hacks.
  6. Build reputation layer so contributors earn visibility/gigs.
  7. Run free skill bounties paid in shoutouts/mentorship.
  8. Create open councils (security, product, evangelism) — no dues.
  9. Use community-voted roadmap that prioritizes affordability.
  10. Teach others your “billion-token equivalent” via smart free iteration.
  11. Foster agent-to-agent chats on free local networks.
  12. Mentor top builders into their own sustainable TDT projects.

Phase 7: Opportunity Harvesting & Perpetual Sustainable Iteration (93-100)

  1. Use the public project as living proof of skills — no big spend needed.
  2. When inbound arrives (jobs, gigs, startups), point to repo + your cost/ROI story.
  3. Never close-source core; monetize only optional services (hosting help, consulting) that fund community.
  4. Spin successful forks into independent foundations when ready.
  5. Track every opportunity that arrives because of the share (self-funding proof).
  6. Iterate weekly on community PRs and your own usage — always cheaper/faster.
  7. Publish “what I learned at $X/month” updates forever.
  8. Reach the point where the community sustains and surpasses you — celebrate, then start next TDT cycle on the same sustainable rules.

Start today with whatever budget you have (most start at $0). Perfect it ruthlessly for yourself. Give it all away exactly like this. The discipleship, opportunities, and self-funding will follow naturally.