Knowledgebase development fundraiser for 2026

[neptronix]

Howdy yall.

Our knowledgebase software is complete but we realized once we hooked it up to ES, that a few things are lacking and requires more development time to get the software from 'good enough' to 'good'.

Here is the list of todos:
- the cheap WYSIWYG editor struggles with advanced formatting and images in some situations. A much better open source editor exists lately and passes our user friendliness requirement and seems actively developed, so it should fix this well.

- we need a comment notification system and display of number of comments on an article both for readers/editors

- we need to make summaries way better, right now they do a very bad job of tempting the user to read an article. This one is hard because we want to make it automatic for the editor and it may involve either using AI or do intensive processing of HTML / JSON content

So far there is some interest in editing, but our editors keep hitting new bumps with our WYSIWYG editor, so contribution is still limited and i think it's imperative to improve that first.

See: ES seeks Knowledgebase editors!

I've put in a few grand to bankroll continued development since we last raised about $3k.
Why? it's a donation to the forum, and also, i want the software to eventually become a badass piece of open source.

But i'm wondering if anyone would be willing to donate again?

If so it'd be awesome to have this software in a very good state for the busy season ( spring - fall ).
Let me know if i can get a few hands.

Edit: donations are open here: https://ko-fi.com/es_kb_fundraiser

 

[aroundqube]

I pledge $200.00

 

[A-DamW]

I think I can swing $100, and probably more later.

 

[aroundqube]

back to the top

 

[dominik h]

Missed this thread somehow.

Will donate 100USD

 

[neptronix]

Ok, good to know we could get some support.
The donation pot is now open at:
https://ko-fi.com/es_kb_fundraiser

 

[neptronix]

10% of the way there already. Thanks to those who donated.

I decided to pay for part of the new WYSIWYG editor integration. That should leave a little extra $ from this funding round to smooth some additional corners.

This WYSIWYG editor will also be added to the comment system so that readers can leave much better comments. Right now the comment entry is pretty spartan.

Keep it coming!

 

[RunForTheHills]

This might be a stupid question as I am not a software or web developer, but will the knowledgebase by crawlable/searchable by search engines like Google and Bing? It seems like that could be a benefit and bring more new people to the forum.

 

[neptronix]

This might be a stupid question as I am not a software or web developer, but will the knowledgebase by crawlable/searchable by search engines like Google and Bing? It seems like that could be a benefit and bring more new people to the forum.

Absolutely. Right now, zero consideration has been put into this and we have no idea how well it works.
Once we have a decent amount of content, this becomes high priority.
But we have to nail the editing and collaborating process before we can expect a growth in the rate of articles added.

Speaking of computer readability, it would be interesting to find a way to optimize the article output for AI understanding. We could use this understanding to make an extremely good search engine which could direct you to the right articles ( instead of sloppily trying to generate a full answer ). I think by the time we get to it, the cost of running AI will be reasonable. ( My Nvidia 5090 just keeps getting better at coding assistance for example, due to the software getting better. That card could handle this task today ).

But first things first

 

[neptronix]

Hello folks.

For some time i have thought about adding AI generated article summaries for our knowledgebase articles since the default 'take the article and chop it off' methodology turns out to really suck. But until now, the output sucked, and/or it cost too much money.

I have a test system with a Nvidia 5090 and with today's AI technology i can finally get enough power and intelligence to do things like:
- generate ( almost ) senior developer level code to help speed up our programming. I have already used this to write AI scraper defenses successfully for ES
- generate summaries of things
- find obscure bugs in our code we would have never even considered
- help me write documentation with a 50/50 mix of human : robot labor



Here is a picture of our baby AI machine. With a power supply relocation, it's ready to accept another big GPU.

Recently i discovered a technique to overstuff a larger AI model into this card and the results are outstanding for such meager hardware.
More nerdy details here:
ES seeks Knowledgebase editors!

The only problem is that while we just hit the intelligence level we need, only 1 person can use it as a time because we don't have the memory.
So it works but can't be used much.

I tacked on $1000 to the amount we want to raise because we need to buy a big $8000 card that can:
- do AI powered spam detection ( since it's what's necessary to counter AI generated spam )
- write KB article summaries
- help us write more code to make ES better per man-hour than we can currently pay for. Our goal is to produce 2x the code per hour by the end of the year, and we think this is possible for ES.
- who knows what else, but we promise to only use it tastefully instead of wantonly.

I will cover the cost of electricity for ES' use. Can ES chip in for GPU too?

 

[neptronix]

Sorry, but i need to be annoying.

The cost of the AI hardware we need is on a steep upward trend over the last 2 weeks.
We have raised $325 so far, but the cost of this hardware we need has gone up $500 over 2 weeks. And i project it to keep going up.

We need our first $1000 of this year's fundraising goals to help pay for one of these:



If you haven't donated yet.. could you help us get this first $1000 together so we can order one before it ( probably ) becomes out of reach?

 

[marty]

Are you wanting to use computer hardware to help write a Knowledgebase? Couldn't you use giant computers that are connected to the internet?

AI Overview

AI computers (specialized, high-powered servers and clusters) are primarily located in
massive, centralized data centers operated by major technology companies and specialized cloud providers. These facilities are heavily concentrated in specific regions that offer high power availability, robust cooling, and favorable regulatory environments.

 

[neptronix]

Read middle of this post for what we need this stupidly expensive equipment for on ES:
Knowledgebase development fundraiser for 2026

Demonstration of it in use:
ES seeks Knowledgebase editors!

 

[A-DamW]

Took me a minute, but I'm in!
I should have a bit more when I am able.

 

[neptronix]

We had another client chip in a huge amount to help us buy the AI hardware



Funding secured on the AI hardware part, urgent request retracted

 

[ljbred08]

I saw this recently and thought I'd share:

I served a 200 billion parameter LLM from a Lenovo workstation the size of a Mac Mini

This mini PC is small and ridiculously powerful.

www.xda-developers.com

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/workstations/thinkstation-p-series/lenovo-thinkstation-pgx-sff/len102s0023

Probably not better than the gpu you posted except that it can run bigger models (more ram and you could get two for the same price, making 256gb total) and that it consumes way less power. Other than that I'm sure the GPU would be way faster. Seemed like an interesting device though, especially if one didn't already have the computer and setup to use such a GPU on.

 

[neptronix]

After playing with localhosted LLMs for a year, i have some opinions about this:

Unfortunately these all in one AI boxes have the memory to run large models but none of the speed.
20 tokens/sec becomes 10 tokens/sec when the context window is filled.
If you are also using agentic software, expect to take a 2-5x speed hit on top.
Once we get below 20 tokens/sec, we enter the territory where it would be faster to do the work yourself.
You must run a substantially dumber AI model to get good speed, and few people would be happy with that. They could have ran that on a more affordable GPU.

Example of this performance difference:



To add insult to injury, if you attempt to buy multiple units and paralellize them, you'll get a very low contribution per unit. It becomes quickly uneconomical to scale up by building a 'cluster'.

These products demo well but aren't ideal for any serious usage.

If you want some 'starter hardware', the below is your best value. You can combine this with some LLM model offloading to DDR5, and successfully evaluate a big 200b model. It will run at a crawl, but at least give you a taste.
https://www.amd.com/en/products/gra...o/ai-9000-series/amd-radeon-ai-pro-r9700.html
Unfortunately paralellization on these is not good yet, but that might change in the future.

Better to make a $1300 mistake than a $4000 mistake
Or even cheaper is just to rent ( if you don't require privacy )
I expect the next generation of AI hardware to be closer to affordable to the masses. But we don't get it until 2027.

If you want to learn more about running LLMs on your own hardware, this is the best community i've found for that:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/

 

[neptronix]

Checking in.

- The AI box is production ready and 4x more intelligent + 2x faster than our previous setup, way better than we expected
- We already developed ~33% of this next version of zeropress because we want it ready by summer
- I'm running one programmer on the knowledgebase software and another on

I've fronted 40% of the cost but we've only got 14% of the funding, whoops

If you have not chipped in yet, please do:
https://ko-fi.com/es_kb_fundraiser

 

[neptronix]

Still stuck at 15% funded only one donation in the last ~2 weeks.

If you have not chipped in yet, please do:
https://ko-fi.com/es_kb_fundraiser

 

[neptronix]

Howdy, our funding is still stuck at 15% and we need your help.
I took the AI charge and AI features off our list of todos. Instead we will just do what's critical. So this puts us at 20% funded.



If you have not chipped in yet, please do:
Support Endless Sphere Knowledgebase Fundraiser

 

[neptronix]

Hey guys. We are completely stalled out on finishing this knowledgebase due to lack of funding.

We have a few people ready to contribute knowledge to the knowledgebase, but are also stalled due to the editor not working for them. We fixed a few bugs, but then found out the hard way that we need a different wysiwyg editor.

The existing articles do not convert well from one editor to another, so knowing you need another wysiwyg editor blocks progress.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.

We still your need some donation to cover:
- take existing code we developed to support new WYSIWYG editor and transplant it into the knowledgebase software, providing a large improvement.
- add notifications to comments so article writers are aaware of feedback
- add the option to produce an AI generated summary ( we have the hardware and proven it works at decent quality )


I paid for an integration to this editor to another piece of software months ago. most of the hard work is already done. It just needs transplanting into the knowledgebase software.

It has a baby mode for chat and comments. It supports image and file uploading.



In the big mode, which would be what editors use to produce articles, it passes difficult tests the previous editor failed, and is much more user friendly. It's on par with a product that would normally cost us $1k/year ( way out of our budget )



So please, if you can chip in, we'd love to get this project done for the forum and start seriously build a condensed format of all the wisdom on here.

https://ko-fi.com/es_kb_fundraiser

 

[bananu7]

I've only noted this now, and before I pledge any cash, I have some questions:

1) "i want the software to eventually become a badass piece of open source." - what's the roadmap for that? Why isn't the source open yet? What does need to happen for it to be? I can imagine that this alone could help development because we could spread the effort over anyone that wants to contribute code, not cash (and code is ~cheap nowadays)

2) "We need our first $1000 of this year's fundraising goals to help pay for one of [very expensive GPU]" - considering most of the ES content is public anyway, how does this purchase stack against a subscription API plan for any existing vendors right now? I understand the motivation for owning hardware rather than giving money to those companies and fully support it, but it seems that at least in short-to-medium time horizon, we'd (as a community) be overpaying by an order of magnitude.

3) What's stopping us from improving the existing KB iteratively focusing on the content and limited feature set now? As I understand it, most of those documents will be perpetually updated anyway. Wouldn't it be better to start using it in however state it is to guide next development rather than build for something big somewhere in the future and losing the opportunity to use it right now?

P.S.
4) "The existing articles do not convert well from one editor to another" Why aren't we targetting existing BBcode or Markdown as a WYSIWYG format to shield the content from bitrot caused by the editor? This is concerning and immediately raises the question if it could happen again in the future when more content is added.

 

[neptronix]

Happy to answer.

1. This software was written as a feature that bolts onto existing software. Me and a few businesses have been slowly crowdfunding it since 2018. Due to this, it's privately available and doesn't have it's own concept of users, an installer, a login page, and other things that would be required for someone to evaluate whether they want to fund it or contribute code. That's a big problem.

Our short term roadmap is to finish the features ES needs, sand any rough edges we find, and make sure ES is happy with it.
Our long term roadmap is to build the capacity to run standalone, then gradually become the wordpress of knowledgebases.

It will become progressively easier to find sources of funding. This ES round builds the public facing side of the software, which adds open source grant appeal. Next up it will be integrated it into a paid product, so that will also provide funding also.

Today, good code is not cheap, but bad code is very cheap. if you build a good product with bad code, you won't have a good product for very long. Few fully AI generated products even get completed because they hit a wall with complexity and AI capabilities. Big companies learned this the hard way and i'm not interested in repeating their mistakes.

We do use AI a little within the range where using it doesn't affect product quality. This software's lifespan should be decades, so high quality, detail oriented construction on it's foundation is critical.


2. I already ate the cost of the GPU myself and reduced the amount we needed to fundraise. We tried renting first and it was a disaster. We could not identify a provider with the uptime we needed. Most providers tested had buggy AI model configuration. Costs for AI service are rising substantially and we expect them to continue to rise. So for a lot of reasons, renting was a bad choice.


3/4. There is no such thing as a bulletproof format. They are constantly changing. Any time you go from one WYSIWYG editor to another, you lose something. Our knowledgebase is young, so it's the right time to break things. We need to make an exceptionally high quality choice and stick with it as long as we can.

I found that volunteer contributors become discouraged by our existing WYSIWYG editor.
We do not have a knowledgebase if volunteer contributors don't like the editing experience.

Recently, TipTap 3.0 became available and it fixes all the issues we found in the field and is much easier to work overall.
In our testing, it's 2x better from a usability perspective.

Our forum software is adopting it in the next major version. So, in theory, you should be able to go from post to article and vice versa without any formatting loss. i'd call that a big deal.

BBcode is not supported by any good WYSIWYG editor. Markdown is nice but lacks advanced formatting support. We want to support markdown later because many nerds have requested it. But we want to get the hard parts right before the easy parts.

 

[neptronix]

We're 6% closer to the goal this week. Not bad.



Keep it coming!

 

[eee291]

Have you looked into monetization? Like small ads or maybe sponsorships?