for a long time i have replaced my nginx instances with openresty ( the open source version with Lua scripting ) and the CVEs seem to be less critical and solved faster:
replace documentation for an agent/chatbot accessing a RAG with the collection of requirements/design docs plus the code repository.
I have been doing a POC at my day job and it works surprisingly well even with SLMs ( Gemma3 4B, i smy current favourite )
"former software developer" does not say much... which field of expertise, which tech stack are you comfortable with ?
In current AI trends coding means very little compared to system design, solution architecture and (argh!) prompt/context engineering... any proven experience there ? a public portfolio ?
and i am sorry, but it does not seem feasible you can afford pets currently...
i have toyed around Tiny Llama 1.1B ( https://github.com/jzhang38/TinyLlama ) for the "conversational brain" of NPCs in a game i was dabbling.... it was fun.