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Nest Intelligence
The open source home affordability platform.
Nest Intelligence is a modular, open source AI-powered home affordability platform designed to help individuals understand what they can truly afford before purchasing a home.
Unlike traditional pre-qualification systems that rely primarily on credit scores and debt-to-income ratios, Nest Intelligence evaluates the complete financial picture of a household. It combines documented income, assets, expenses, geographic cost data, lifestyle factors, and AI-driven financial conversations to provide a realistic affordability recommendation.
Nest Intelligence is designed as a privacy-first, self-hostable financial intelligence system that helps buyers make informed decisions without unnecessary credit inquiries or opaque scoring systems.
Licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).
Vision
Home affordability should not be determined by a single number from a financial institution.
A sustainable home purchase depends on understanding:
- Income stability
- Available assets
- Current expenses
- Transportation costs
- Local housing costs
- Property taxes
- Insurance expenses
- Household lifestyle
- Future financial goals
- Emergency preparedness
Nest Intelligence provides a complete affordability analysis based on real-world living conditions.
Features
Open Source Architecture
- AGPL-3.0+ licensed
- Fully transparent and auditable
- Community-driven development
- Self-hostable deployment
- Local-first privacy architecture
- Modular specification-driven design
- Replaceable AI model support
- Plugin-based expansion system
- API-first architecture
- Community contribution support
AI Financial Advisor
- Conversational AI financial guidance
- Personalized affordability recommendations
- Homeownership readiness analysis
- Budget optimization assistance
- Financial planning conversations
- Savings recommendations
- Debt management guidance
- Long-term affordability projections
- Financial wellness evaluation
- Human-readable explanations of recommendations
AI Buyer Interview System
- Interactive financial discovery process
- Natural language conversations
- Adaptive questioning
- Context-aware follow-up questions
- Missing information detection
- Contradiction detection
- Financial habit analysis
- Household profile creation
- Personalized recommendations
The AI does not simply collect numbers. It understands the lifestyle behind the numbers.
Income Analysis
Supports:
- Pay stubs
- W-2 income
- 1099 income
- Self-employed income
- Business income
- Commission income
- Bonus income
- Overtime income
- Retirement income
- Social Security income
- Investment income
- Rental income
- Trust income
- Multiple income households
Capabilities:
- Income verification
- Income consistency analysis
- Income trend analysis
- Stability scoring
- Documentation review
- Missing income source detection
Asset Analysis
Analyzes:
- Checking accounts
- Savings accounts
- Investment accounts
- Retirement accounts
- Certificates of deposit
- Business ownership
- Real estate equity
- Other financial assets
Provides:
- Down payment readiness
- Closing cost analysis
- Emergency reserve evaluation
- Liquidity assessment
- Asset allocation review
Financial Document Intelligence
Supports:
- PDF documents
- Scanned documents
- Financial statements
- Tax documents
- Employment documents
- Bank statements
- Investment statements
Features:
- OCR processing
- Document classification
- Data extraction
- Financial field recognition
- Duplicate detection
- Missing documentation alerts
- Confidence scoring
AI Transaction Analysis
Reviews financial transactions to understand actual spending behavior.
Features:
- Transaction categorization
- Recurring expense detection
- Subscription identification
- Spending trend analysis
- Merchant classification
- Cash flow analysis
- Unusual transaction detection
The AI can ask questions such as:
- “Can you explain this large transfer?”
- “Is this vehicle repair a recurring expense?”
- “Is this payment temporary or ongoing?”
Lifestyle Affordability Analysis Module
Nest Intelligence evaluates the cost of the life surrounding the home.
Analyzes:
- Food expenses
- Dining habits
- Entertainment
- Travel
- Hobbies
- Fitness memberships
- Streaming services
- Pets
- Childcare
- Education
- Personal expenses
- Household supplies
The goal is not determining the maximum someone can borrow.
The goal is determining what someone can comfortably afford.
Transportation Cost Analysis
Includes:
Vehicle Expenses
- Auto loan payments
- Lease payments
- Vehicle insurance
- Fuel costs
- Electric vehicle charging
- Registration fees
- Inspection fees
- Maintenance
- Repairs
- Tires
- Oil changes
- Vehicle replacement planning
Transportation Alternatives
- Public transportation
- Ride sharing
- Parking costs
- Tolls
- Bicycle commuting
- Commute distance analysis
Transportation costs are included because vehicle ownership can significantly impact housing affordability.
Housing Cost Analysis
Calculates:
- Mortgage payment estimates
- Principal and interest
- Property taxes
- Homeowners insurance
- Mortgage insurance
- HOA fees
- Condo fees
- Utilities
- Internet
- Water
- Sewer
- Trash
- Maintenance
- Repairs
- Landscaping
- Home warranty costs
Geographic Intelligence
Evaluates location-specific affordability.
Includes:
- City analysis
- County analysis
- ZIP code analysis
- Neighborhood comparisons
- Housing price data
- Cost of living data
- Local taxes
- Utility costs
- Transportation expenses
- Insurance considerations
Property Tax Intelligence
Analyzes:
- County tax rates
- Municipal tax rates
- School taxes
- Special assessments
- Historical tax increases
- Homestead exemptions
- Estimated monthly escrow impact
Food and Household Cost Analysis
Includes:
- Grocery estimates
- Household size adjustments
- Regional pricing differences
- Dining expenses
- Household supply costs
- Lifestyle spending patterns
Affordability Engine
Provides:
- Maximum purchase price estimate
- Recommended purchase price
- Conservative purchase price
- Mortgage scenarios
- Down payment scenarios
- Interest rate scenarios
- Monthly affordability analysis
- Cash flow projections
- Financial stress testing
Outputs:
- Affordability score
- Risk indicators
- Budget recommendations
- Improvement opportunities
Financial Stress Testing
Simulates:
- Job loss scenarios
- Income reduction
- Inflation increases
- Interest rate changes
- Vehicle replacement
- Emergency expenses
- Major home repairs
- Healthcare expenses
AI Recommendations
Provides:
- Home purchase readiness
- Recommended price range
- Budget adjustments
- Savings opportunities
- Expense reduction suggestions
- Financial risk warnings
- Long-term sustainability recommendations
Privacy Features
- No credit bureau inquiries
- No credit score impact
- User-controlled data
- Local processing options
- Self-hosting support
- Encrypted storage options
- Data deletion controls
- Audit logs
Open Source AI Model Support
Compatible with open source AI ecosystems including:
- Llama
- Mistral
- Mixtral
- Qwen
- DeepSeek
- Gemma
- Falcon
- Phi
- GPT4All
- Ollama
- llama.cpp
- Hugging Face Transformers
- ONNX Runtime
- vLLM
AI Infrastructure Support
Supports:
- Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
- Local knowledge bases
- Financial document search
- Vector databases
- Semantic search
- Custom financial rules
- Model swapping
- Agent workflows
Data Sources
Supports integration with:
- Real estate datasets
- Public property records
- Municipal tax databases
- Census data
- Cost-of-living datasets
- Utility datasets
- Fuel pricing data
- Insurance datasets
- Public financial information
Deployment Options
Supports:
- Desktop applications
- Web applications
- Local servers
- Private cloud deployments
- Docker environments
- Kubernetes environments
- Enterprise installations
Compatible with:
- Linux
- Windows
- macOS
Developer Features
- REST API
- Modular services
- Plugin architecture
- Custom affordability rules
- Custom AI workflows
- Configurable calculations
- Data connector framework
- Automated testing
- Documentation system
- Community extensions
Future Modules
Potential expansion modules include:
- Mortgage refinancing analysis
- Home equity planning
- Insurance comparison
- Property investment analysis
- Rental vs ownership comparison
- Relocation affordability
- Retirement housing planning
- Home maintenance forecasting
- Wealth-building analysis
Contributing
Contributions are welcome from developers, financial analysts, data scientists, housing experts, and community members.
Areas for contribution include:
- AI models
- Data integrations
- Financial calculations
- Geographic datasets
- User interface improvements
- Documentation
- Testing
Nest Intelligence
The open source home affordability platform.
Helping people understand what they can truly afford before making one of life’s biggest financial decisions.
Specification Branding License (SBL)
Standard
- Fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant system
- Copyleft enforced for network deployments
- Required attribution:
- Roxanne Ardary
- https://www.roxanneardary.com/
Optional
- Specification Branding License (SBL)
- Attribution-free commercial deployment
- Pricing based on scale, usage, and deployment scope
- https://roxanneardary.com/nest-intelligence/
License & Notice Requirements
Nest Intelligence is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).
By contributing to any Open Arsenal project, you agree that your contributions will also be released under this license.
Please note the following:
- All contributions must comply with the AGPL-3.0+ terms.
- Under Section 7 of the license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works must preserve attribution to: Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.
- Nest Intelligence specifications are free to use with attribution. A Specification Branding License can be negotiated upon request.
- The project’s
notice.mdfile tracks attribution requirements and contributor acknowledgments. - Any update that adds new contributors or modifies attribution should also update
notice.md. - When submitting a pull request, ensure that any new files maintain the attribution headers where applicable.
- Network-deployed versions of this software must also remain fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant, including exposure of source code modifications when applicable under the license.
For full legal details, please refer to the AGPL-3.0+ license and the project’s notice.md file.
Notice – Nest Intelligence
Attribution Requirement: Under Section 7 of the AGPL 3.0+ license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works, including network-deployed versions of this project, must provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.
Contributors
This file tracks contributors and their specific contributions to the project.
- Roxanne Ardary, roxanneardary.com – July 19, 2026
Created the repository for Nest Intelligence. Created the open source home affordability platform specification, defining a modular AI-driven financial advisor system that evaluates income, assets, expenses, geographic costs, and lifestyle factors to provide transparent home affordability recommendations. - [Add other contributors here] – [Date]
[Describe contribution in one sentence]
License – Nest Intelligence
This repository is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).
Key Points
- You are free to use, modify, and distribute the code.
- All redistributions, forks, and derivative works or network-deployed versions must also be licensed under AGPL-3.0+ and provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com as required under Section 7 of the license.
- The software is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind.
For the full license text, see GNU AGPL-3.0 License.