Physical shell for local AI hardware.
Dark grey cast concrete enclosure for the small-form-factor computers your agents run on. NFC deadman switch at boot. Passive thermal mass through an embedded aluminum heatsink and a carbon-black-pigmented thermally-conductive matrix. Fiber-reinforced structural protection. Built for OpenClaw, Hermes, and other open-agent stacks running 24/7 on hardware you can touch.
Pre-orders are open at shell3d.com. First production run ships October 2026.
A sub-brand of Sunnyday Technologies LLC. This repository covers the open-source firmware and agent integration hooks. The cast composite formulation and the mold geometry are proprietary to Sunnyday Technologies and are not part of this repo.
Three functions in one cast body:
- Physical security. An NFC tag is embedded in the shell during casting. A small host-side daemon checks for that tag at boot. If the host has been moved off the shell, the daemon returns a fail state and your agent service does not start.
- Thermal management. An aluminum heatsink is cast into the body. A thermal interface couples the host computer to the heatsink, and the surrounding concrete is pigmented with carbon black for thermal conductivity, then absorbs and spreads heat over a long time constant. The carbon black is also why the shell is dark grey. Passive. No fan, no pump, no maintenance.
- Structural protection. The cast body is a Sunnyday fiber-reinforced composite. It raises the cost of an opportunistic smash-and-grab without making the unit hostile to move when the operator legitimately needs to.
This is a behavioral physical-security layer, not a tamper-resistant vault. Treat it as one layer in a defense-in-depth posture: full-disk encryption, hardware-bound credentials, network egress controls, and Shell3D, working together.
The boot contract is intentionally tiny:
shell3d-check
exit 0 → registered NFC tag is present at host location
exit !0 → registered tag absent; agent must not launch inference loop
The host-side daemon makes no outbound network calls. The check runs once per agent boot. There is no continuous polling and no telemetry.
Full design notes in firmware/nfc-deadman/README.md and the security model in docs/security-model.md.
The reference reader hardware is open. Tested or planned:
- ESP32 + PN532 NFC module (USB serial to host) — first reference build
- Raspberry Pi Zero 2W + PN532 HAT — secondary backend
- Any host-attached PC/SC reader with a Type 2 NFC tag
NFC tag spec: Type 2 (NTAG215 or equivalent), embedded read-only at casting time.
Reference wiring diagrams will be published under hardware/ once the first bench build is complete.
The PlatformIO project lands in firmware/nfc-deadman/ when v0.1 ships. Until then, this README is the design spec.
Planned install flow once v0.1 is published:
git clone https://github.com/sunnyday-technologies/shell3d.git
cd shell3d/firmware/nfc-deadman
pio run -t upload # flashes the ESP32The host-side daemon (shell3d-host) will ship as a Python package and a single static binary. Distribution method is finalized at v0.2.
Starter hooks for two open-agent frameworks:
firmware/agent-hooks/openclaw/— OpenClaw startup hookfirmware/agent-hooks/hermes/— Hermes startup hook
If your framework is not covered, the contract is the same as above: invoke shell3d-check in your agent's pre-launch hook chain and refuse to boot on non-zero exit. Open an issue if you would like a starter hook for an additional framework.
Pre-orders are open at shell3d.com. A small deposit reserves a unit from the first production run; the balance is invoiced approximately 30 days before ship and is fully refundable until that point.
| Model | Audience | Weight | Deposit | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shell3D-Mini | Mac Mini M-series | ~25 lb | $100 | $250 |
| Shell3D-Spark | DGX Spark, NVIDIA edge | ~25 lb | $100 | $250 |
| Shell3D-Studio | Mac Studio and larger | ~50 lb | $200 | $500 |
Custom enclosures (multi-host racks, alternate badging, larger formats) are produced to order. Email shell3d@sunn3d.com to scope a custom unit.
A machine-readable product feed for autonomous-agent consumers is published at https://shell3d.com/agents.json.
The firmware, agent integration hooks, reference wiring diagrams, and documentation in this repository are MIT-licensed. See LICENSE.
The Sunnyday Technologies cast concrete formulations, mold geometry, and trademarks are not licensed under MIT and remain proprietary to Sunnyday Technologies LLC.
Pre-launch / prototype phase. The reference firmware bench-build is the next milestone. Site, repo scaffolding, and pre-order intake are live; the first cast unit and firmware drop land before October 2026 ship.
Roadmap milestones:
- M1 First reference cast unit (NFC tag + aluminum heatsink embedded, finished, demo-ready)
- M2 Firmware v0.1 (ESP32 + PN532, serial UID readout)
- M3 Host-side daemon v0.2 (
shell3d-checkbinary + re-pairing flow) - M4 OpenClaw and Hermes hooks v0.1
- M5 First production run, October 2026 ship
Shell3D is a sub-brand of Sunnyday Technologies LLC. Contact: shell3d@sunn3d.com.