My research setup has to work without an AI agent

I want to close every AI assistant and continue working. I'd lose speed. I shouldn't lose my understanding of the project, access to my sources, or the ability to run the tools that got me this far. My work involves understanding research quickly, trying things, and figuring out what my own results mean. I want frontier models helping with that, without making one company's app a prerequisite for understanding my work. This space is changing quickly. I'll be adding to and replacing parts of this setup soon. This is a snapshot of what's useful to me today, and why I think it's worth spending time configuring these tools around your work. Here's what that means in practice: The friction: context that gets trapped, opaque actions, and more integrations to maintain. The requirement: evidence I can inspect and work I can continue myself. The setup: local tools, on-demand skills, and the audit trail I'm still missing. Where agent workflows lose me These are the things I want my setup to…