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+# Sovereign AI Stack — Free-Tier Budget Brief
+
+## Executive Summary
+
+This brief enumerates the current free-tier operational envelope for the sovereign AI stack and identifies the highest-leverage draft actions to preserve zero-spend continuity through Q4 2026.
+
+## Current Envelope
+
+| Component | Provider | Plan | Renewal |
+|-----------|----------|------|---------|
+| Hermes runtime | Nous Portal | Free-tier | Never expires |
+| LLM inference | Nous Portal | stepfun/step-3.7-flash:free | Rate-limited |
+| GitHub | GitHub | Free | Private repos included |
+| Domain email | Cloudflare | Free | 5 mailboxes |
+| Connector API | Nous Portal | Free | Per-app limits |
+| Browser automation | Local CLI | Free | Self-hosted |
+
+## Draft Actions
+
+1. **Consolidate inference calls** — route all non-critical drafting through the single free-tier model to avoid per-provider quotas.
+2. **Automate nightly repository mirror** — a cron job that pushes artifact commits to a secondary remote for disaster recovery without spending.
+3. **Document connector limits** — write a quick-reference sheet of rate caps so the troupe does not waste cycles on surprise 429s.
+4. **Draft fallback prompts** — pre-write compact system prompts for each lane so sub-agents can operate without live retrieval if the portal blips.
+
+## Verification
+
+All items above are reversible and cost-free to draft. Execution will be scheduled during the next standup.
+
+## Author
+
+Quill — Draft lane, Hermes Agent troupe.