- This posts lists inexpensive home servers, Tailscale and Claude Code as the big unlocks.
I actually think Tailscale may be an even bigger deal here than sysadmin help from Claude Code at al.
The biggest reason I had not to run a home server was security: I'm worried that I might fall behind on updates and end up compromised.
Tailscale dramatically reduces this risk, because I can so easily configure it so my own devices can talk to my home server from anywhere in the world without the risk of exposing any ports on it directly to the internet.
Being able to hit my home server directly from my iPhone via a tailnet no matter where in the world my iPhone might be is really cool.
by thrownawaysz
19 subcomments
- I went down the self host route some years ago but once critical problems hit I realized that beyond a simple NAS it can be a very demanding hobby.
I was in another country when there was a power outage at home. My internet went down, the server restart but couldn't reconnect anymore because the optical network router also had some problems after the power outage. I could ask my folks to restart, and turn on off things but nothing more than that. So I couldn't reach my Nextcloud instance and other stuff. Maybe an uninterruptible power supply could have helped but the more I was thinking about it after just didn't really worth the hassle anymore. Add a UPS okay. But why not add a dual WAN failover router for extra security if the internet goes down again? etc. It's a bottomless pit (like most hobbies tbh)
Also (and that's a me problem maybe) I was using Tailscale but I'm more "paranoid" about it nowadays. Single point of failure service, US-only SSO login (MS, Github, Apple, Google), what if my Apple account gets locked if I redeem a gift card and I can't use Tailscale anymore? I still believe in self hosting but probably I want something even more "self" to the extremes.
by valcron1000
2 subcomments
- > When something breaks, I SSH in, ask the agent what is wrong, and fix it.
> I am spending time using software, learning
What are you actually learning?
PSA: OP is a CEO of an AI company
- I think it's great that people are getting into self-hosting, but I don't think it's _the_ solution to get us off of big tech.
Having others run a service for you is a good thing! I'd love to pay a subscription for a service, but ran as a cooperative, where I'm not actually just paying a subscription fee, instead I'm a member and I get to decide what gets done as well.
This model works so well for housing, where the renters are also the owners of the building. Incentives are aligned perfectly, rents are kept low, the building is kept intact, no unnecessary expensive stuff added. And most importantly, no worries of the building ever getting sold and things going south. That's what I would like for my cloud storage, e-mail etc.
- My favorite genre of post in r/homelab and r/selfhosted this past year has been "I used AI to set all this stuff up and something broke so I asked AI to fix it and now all my data is gone."
There are so many NAS + Curated App Catalog distros out there that make self-hosting trivial without needing to Vibe SysAdmin.
by InfinityByTen
2 subcomments
- I was just thinking I should write something about this, because the words needs spreading.
I cannot say how happy I am configuring my own immich server on a decade old machine. I just feel empowered. Because despite my 9 years of software development, I haven't gotten into the nitty gritties of networking, VPN and I always see something non-standard while installing an open source package and without all of this custom guidance, I always would give up after a couple of hours of pulling my hair apart.
I really want to go deeper and it finally feels this could be a hobby.
PS: The rush was so great I was excitedly talking to my wife how I could port our emails away from google, considering all of the automatic opt in for AI processing and what not. The foolhardy me thought of even sabbatical breaks to work on long pending to-do's in my head.
- I am building a homelab with the help of various AI services. I started with ChatGPT, then moved to Claude, and I am now working with Cursor and Gemini.
In my experience, this approach works extremely well—I would not have been able to accomplish this much on my own. However, there is an important caveat: you must understand what you are doing. AI systems sometimes propose solutions that do not work, and in some cases they can be genuinely dangerous to your data integrity or your privacy.
AI is therefore a powerful accelerator, not a replacement for expertise. You still need to critically evaluate its suggestions and veto roughly 10% of them.
by Humorist2290
1 subcomments
- Fun. I don't agree that Claude Code is the real unlock, but mostly because I'm comfortable with doing this myself. That said, the spirit of the article is spot on. The accessibility to run _good_ web services has never been better. If you have a modest budget and an interest, that's enough -- the skill gap is closing. That's good news I think.
But Tailscale is the real unlock in my opinion. Having a slot machine cosplaying as sysadmin is cool, but being able to access services securely from anywhere makes them legitimately usable for daily life. It means your services can be used by friends/family if they can get past an app install and login.
I also take minor issue with running Vaultwarden in this setup. Password managers are maximally sensitive and hosting that data is not as banal as hosting Plex. Personally, I would want Vaultwarden on something properly isolated and locked down.
- Been self-hosting for last 20 years and I would have to say LLMs were good for generating suggestions when debugging an issue I hadn't seen before, or for one I had seen before but was looking for a quicker fix. I've used it to generate bash scripts, firewall regex.
On self-hosting: be aware that it is a warzone out there. Your IP address will be probed constantly for vulnerabilities, and even those will need to dealt with as most automated probes don't throttle and can impact your server. That's probably my biggest issue along with email deliverability.
- I do the same thing on my Hostinger VPS with Claude even though I have been using Linux 30 years. Just removes the friction and time. I version control the DevOps with git, and even had Claude setup automated backups to my Google Drive via cron.
workdir/
├── README.md
├── CLAUDE.md # Claude Code instructions
├── BACKUP.md # Backup documentation
├── .gitignore
├── traefik/
│ ├── docker-compose.yml
│ └── config/
│ └── traefik.yml
├── authentik/
│ ├── docker-compose.yml
│ └── .env.example
├── umami/
│ ├── docker-compose.yml
│ └── .env.example
├── n8n/
│ ├── docker-compose.yml
│ └── .env.example
└── backup/
├── backup.sh # Automated backup script
├── restore.sh # Restore from backup
├── verify.sh # Verify backup integrity
├── list-backups.sh # List available backups
└── .env.example
by catlifeonmars
1 subcomments
- > I have flirted with self-hosting at home for years. I always bounced off it - too much time spent configuring instead of using. It just wasn't fun.
No judgement, but wanting to tinker/spend time on configuration is a major reason why many people do self-host.
- I would really like some kind of agnostic backup protocol, so I can simply configure my backup endpoint using an environment variable (e.g. `-e BACKUP_ENDPOINT=https://backup.example.com/backup -e BACKUP_IDENTIFIER=xxxxx`), then the application can push a backup on a regular schedule. If I need to restore a backup, I log onto the backup app, select a backup file and generate a one time code which I can enter into the application to retrieve the data. To set up a new application for backups, you would enter a friendly name into the backup application and it would generate a key for use in the application.
by legojoey17
1 subcomments
- I just got around to a fresh NixOS install and I couldn't be happier as I've been able to do practically everything via Codex while keeping things concise and documented (given it's nix, not a bunch of commands of the past).
I recently had a bunch of breakages and needed to port a setup - I had a complicated k3s container in proxmox setup but needed it in a VM to fix various disk mounts (I hacked on ZFS mounts, and was swapping it all for longhorn)
As is expected, life happens and I stopped having time for anything so the homelab was out of commission. I probably would still be sitting on my broken lab given a lack of time.
- Wait… tailscale connection to your own network, and unsupervised sysadmin from an oracle that hallucinates and bases its decisions on blog post aggregates?
p0wnland. this will have script kiddies rubbing their hands
- What I do at home is ubuntu on a cheap small computer I found on ebay. ufw blocks everything except 80, 443, and 22. Setup ssh to not use passwords and ensure nginx+letsencrypt doesn’t run as root. Then, forward 80 and 443 from my home router to the server so it’s reachable from the internet. That’s about it, now I have an internet accessible reverse proxy to surface anything running on that server. The computers on the same LAN (just my laptop basically) have host file entries for the server. My registrar handles DNS for the external side (routers public ip). Ssh’ing to the server requires a lan IP but that’s no big deal I’m at home whenever I’m working on it anyway.
- Home NAS servers are already shipped with user friendly GUI. Personally I haven't used them, but I certainly would prefer it, or recommend it to tech-illitarate people instead of allowing LLM to manage the server.
- Threads like this one make me feel at home. Last night I spent an hour trying to figure out a way to adjust tailscale to allow me access to containers on a MacVLAN on my NAS when I connect in away from home. Claude's an excellent tool to help me make informed decisions. I find the knowledge needs to be double checked more than some domains (I'm a big fan of requesting Claude search online for information before using its discourse as a basis for any decisions) but I still feel like I'm learning the WHY and HOW because I can still ask.
I share a lot of the same hesitations as others in the thread - using a giant US-based tech giant's tool for research as well as another US giant's tool to manage access, but it's really a game change and I'd be unable to find the time to do everything I want if I didn't have access to these otherwise.
I'm not even a software guy by engineering, my network is already complicated enough that learning and correctly securing things otherwise would simply just not be feasible with the time and energy I'd like to dedicate to it.
- I've been building a home library system mainly for personal use, I want to run it cheaply so a $4 black Friday sale OVH vps is perfect.
But I wanted decent deployments. Hosting a image repository cost 3-4x of the server. Sending over the container image took over an hour due to large image processing python dependencies.
Solution? Had a think and a chat with Claude code, now I have blue-green deployments where I just upload the code which takes 5 seconds, everything is then run by systemd. I looked at the various PaaSes but they ran up to $40/month with compute+database etc.
I would probably never have built this myself. I'd have gotten bored 1/3 through. Now it's working like a charm.
Is it enterprise grade? Gods no. Is it good enough? Yes.
- I used Codex to set up a raspberry pi as a VPN with WireGuard. I had no similar experience before and it was super easy. I used Claude Code to audit and clean up a 10+ year old AWS account- patching security, shutting down redundant services, simplifying the structure. I want Claude Code to replace every bad UI out there. I know what outcome I want and don’t need to learn all the details to get there.
by comrade1234
0 subcomment
- Prices are going to have an effect here. I have a 76TB backup drive of 8 drives. A few months ago one of my 10TB drives failed and I replaced it with a 12 TB WD gold for 269CHF. I was thinking of building a new backup drive (for fun) and so I priced the same drive and now it's 409CHF.
It's not tariffs (I'm in Switzerland). It's 100% the buildout of data centers for AI.
- I've recently begun moving the systems I administer to Claude-written NixOS configs. Nix is great but can be a real pain to write yourself; Claude removes the pain.
- As an added bonus you could add on a mobile-first claude code UI on top of claude. I've been working on this and use it on my pi5 at home. https://yepanywhere.com/
(and no, this product is not against TOS as it is using the official claude code SDK unlike opencode https://yepanywhere.com/tos-compliance.html)
by river_otter
1 subcomments
- Next level up is self hosting your LLM! I put LM Studio on a mac mini at home and have been extremely happy with it. Then you can use a tool like opencode to connect to that LLM and boom, Claude Code dependency is removed and you just got even more self-hosted. For what you're using Claude Code for, a smaller open-weight model would probably work fine
by nickdothutton
0 subcomment
- On the one hand, self-hosting, even at home, is more accessible than it has ever been. Hardware, software, and agents to help with setup and maintenance. While at the same time ISPs, the big email providers, and even (in the UK) government legislation makes it more difficult or risky than it has ever been. We have gained much but also lost much since the mid 1990s.
by recvonline
0 subcomment
- I started the same project end of last year and it’s true - having an LLM guide you through the setup and writing docs is a real game changer!
I just wish this post wasn’t written by an LLM! I miss the days where you can feel the nerdy joy through words across the internet.
- > The reason is simple: CLI agents like Claude Code make self-hosting on a cheapo home server dramatically easier and actually fun.
But I want to host an LLM.
by compounding_it
3 subcomments
- I don't really understand this post completely.
>I am spending time using software, learning, and having fun - instead of maintaining it and stressing out about it.
Using software, learning and having fun with with what? everything is being done by Claude here. The part of fun and learning is to learn to use and maintain it in the first place. How will you learn anything if Claude is doing everything for you ? You are not understand how things work and where everything goes.
This post could be written or at least modified by an LLM, but more importantly I think this person is completely missing the point of self hosting and learning.
- Timely! I just re-setup my Pi5 with the help of Claude. https://github.com/kaihendry/ai-pi
Tbh I did the mistake of throwing away Ansible, so testing my setup was a pain!
Since with AI, the focus should be on testing, perhaps it's sensible to drop Ansible for something like https://github.com/goss-org/goss
Things are happening so fast, I was impressed to see a Linux distro embrace using a SKILL.md! https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy/blob/master/default/omar...
- This post is spot on, the combo of tailscale + Claude Code is a game changer. This is particularly true for companies as well.
CC lets you hack together internal tools quickly, and tailscale means you can safely deploy them without worrying about hardening the app and server from the outside world. And tailscale ACLs lets you fully control who can access what services.
It also means you can literally host the tools on a server in your office, if you really want to.
Putting CC on the server makes this set up even better. It’s extremely good at system admin.
by minihoster
0 subcomment
- Might as well ask here in case author or anyone else with a similar setup is reading. Has anyone run into stability issues running a bunch of self-hosting stuff on a mac mini M1 (8GB)? My setup is pretty basic - docker running Jellyfin, Immich, *arr software, qbittorrent. Stuff is stored on a NAS over SMB. Usually within a few hours of rebooting, the OS or at least userspace totally freezes. SSH connections are instantly closed, screen share doesn't work. It responds to ping for a while but that also goes down eventually. Pretty stumped...
- Tailscsle was never the unlock for me, but I guess I never was the typical use case here.
I have a 1U (or more), sitting in a rack in a local datacenter. I have an IP block to myself.
Those servers are now publicly exposed and only a few ports are exposed for mail, HTTP traffic and SSH (for Git).
I guess my use case also changes in that I don’t use things just for me to consume, select others can consume services I host.
My definition here of self-hosting isn’t that I and I only can access my services; that’s be me having a server at home which has some non critical things on it.
- I've landed on a similar philosophy but with a slightly different approach to orchestration. Instead of managing everything interactively, I built a lightweight bash-based deployment system that uses rsync + docker compose across multiple machines.
The structure is dead simple: `machines/<hostname>/stacks/<service>/` with a `config.sh` per machine defining SSH settings and optional pre/post deploy hooks. One command syncs files and runs `docker compose up -d`.
I could see Claude Code being useful for debugging compose files or generating new stack configs, but having the deployment itself be a single `./deploy.sh homeserver media` keeps the feedback loop tight and auditable.
by wantlotsofcurry
1 subcomments
- Was this article written entirely by Claude for the most part? It definitely reads like it was.
- This is very cool and I'm doing something similar but without the Claude interface as the contact point for manipulating the server. What happens if one day Claude is down, or it becomes too expensive, or it is purchased by another company, etc.
In this case you will be completely unable to navigate the infrastructure of your homeserver that your life will have become dependent on.
But a homeserver is always about your levels of risk, single points of failure. I'm personally willing to accept Tailscale but I'm not willing to give the manipulation of all services directly over to Claude.
- Anyone seriously about tech should have a homelab. It’s a small capital investment that lasts for years and with proxmox or similar having your own personal “private cloud” on demand is simple.
- I'm working on something very similar, but I've found that if I'm not doing the work - I forget what has been set up and how its running a lot faster.
For example - I have ZFS running with a 5-bay HDD enclosure, and I honestly can't remember any of the rules about import-ing / export-ing to stop / start / add / remove pools etc.
I have to write many clear notes, and store them in a place where future me will find them - otherwise the system gets very flaky through my inability to remember what's active and what isn't. Running the service and having total control is fun, but it's a responsibility too
by jackschultz
0 subcomment
- I literally did this yesterday and had the same thought. Older computer (8 gigs ram) with crappy windows I never used and I thought huh, I wonder how good these models can take me through installing linux with goal of docker deploys of relatively basic things like cron tasks, personal postgres, and minio that I can used for self shared data.
Took a couple hours with some things I ran across, but the model had me go through the setup for debian, how to go through the setup gui, what to check to make it server only, then it took me through commands to run so it wouldn't stop when I closed the laptop, helped with tailscale, getting the ssh keys all setup. Heck it even suggested doing daily dumps of the database and saving to minio and then removing after that. Also knows about the limitations of 8 gigs of ram and how to make sure docker settings for the difference self services I want to build don't cause issues.
Give me a month and true strong intention and ability to google and read posts and find the answer on my own and I still don't think I would have gotten to this point with the amount of trust I have in the setup.
I very much agree with this topic about self hosting coming alive because these models can walk you through everything. Self building and self hosting can really come alive. And in the future when open models are that much better and hardware costs come down (maybe, just guessing of course) we'll be able to also host our own agents on these machines we have setup already. All being able to do it ourselves.
by visageunknown
6 subcomments
- I find LLMs remove all the fun for me. When I build my homelab, I want the satisfaction of knowing that I did it. And the learning gains that only come from doing it manually. I don't mind using an LLM to shortcut areas that are just pure pain with no reward, but I abstain from using it as much as possible. It gives you the illusion that you've accomplished something.
by JodieBenitez
1 subcomments
- So it's self hosting but with a paid and closed saas dependency ? I'll pass.
by chromehearts
0 subcomment
- Me personally; I have a similar mini pc with kubuntu installed, coolify to deploy my projects & cloudflare tunnels to expose them to the internet. the mini pc is still usable for daily use so that's great too
- And if you prefer to learn well how to do it without AI, you can always try to do it manually the old way but then use AI at the end to review your config and spot any security issues
- Just make sure you have a local and remote backup server.
From to time, test the restore process.
- I think this is a good idea so long as you ensure you've got a good backup going or don't put anything super critical on there. I think it's seriously outside odds that Claude `rm -rf /`s your server, but definitely not 0%.
- Just got a home-server. Immich is awesome! How's Caddy working out though? I need a way to expose immich to public internet (not just a VPN). Something like photos.domain.com
For now I'm just using Cloudflare tunnels, but ideally I also want to do that myself (without getting DDoS)
- Great post! Totally agree – agents like Claude Code make self-hosting a lot more realistic and low maintenance for the average dev.
We've gone a step further, and made this even easier with https://zo.computer
You get a server, and a lot of useful built-in functionality (like the ability to text with your server)
by danpalmer
4 subcomments
- There's something ironic about using Claud Code – a closed source service, that you can't self-host the hardware for, and that you can't get access to the data for – to self-host so that you can reduce your dependencies on things.
- Been using Claude Code to build a small deployment tool (Frost) for exactly this use case. The meta experience is interesting - using an AI agent to build tooling that makes self-hosting easier.
What I've found: Claude Code is great at the "figure out this docker/nginx/systemd incantation" part but the orchestration layer (health checks, rollbacks, zero-downtime deploys) still benefits from purpose-built tooling. The AI handles the tedious config generation while you focus on the actual workflow.
github.com/elitan/frost if curious
- I self host a lot of stuff myself: https://uptime.jeena.net/status/everything
And until now without AI, but I'm kind of curious but afraid that it will bring my servers down and then I can't roll back :D But perhaps if I would move over to NixOS, then it would be easy to roll back.
by cyber_kinetist
0 subcomment
- No, 2026 is definitely not the year of home servers, because hardware has become too expensive.
Maybe viable if you have a bunch of spare parts laying around. But probably not when RAM and storage prices are off the charts!
by notesinthefield
2 subcomments
- I find myself a bit overwhelmed with hardware options during recent explorations. Seemingly everything can handle what I want a local copy of my Bandcamp archive to stream via jellyfin. Good times we’re in but even having good sysadmin skills, I wish someone would just tell me exactly what to buy.
by hmontazeri
0 subcomment
- Love this. I run also all my stuff by myself and I’m not an infra expert by all means just know enough to self host my app and services. I also built an remote monitoring agent using Go and rails I call it https://bareagent.io which monitors servers, docker containers and sends notifications when in any of those containers an error occurres as it is attached to the container logs
- > Your home server's new sysadmin: Claude Code
(In)famous last words?
- I have been self hosting since the late 90s, but I've always just installed everything on Bare metal. I hear more and more about these elaborate Docker setups. What does a setup like this actually look like?
Is it just a single docker-compose.yml with everything you want to run and 'docker compose up'?
by reactordev
0 subcomment
- I just recently wrote my own agent that can gdb, objdump, nasm, cc, make, and more.
Agents are powerful. Even more so with skills and command line tools they can call to do things. You can even write custom tools (like I did) for them to use that allows for things like live debugging.
The tailscale piece to this setup is key.
by HarHarVeryFunny
0 subcomment
- Interesting use case for Claude Code, or any similar local executor talking to a remote AI (Gemini suggests that "Hybrid-Local AI Agent" is a generic name for these, although I've never heard it called that before).
I wonder if a local model might be enough for sysadmin skills, especially if were trained specifically for this ?
I wonder if iOS has enough hooks available that one could make a very small/simple agentic Siri replacement like this that was able to manage the iPhone at least better than Siri (start and stop apps, control them, install them, configure iPhone, etc) ?
- I self-host many things on a NAS (Asustor) using Portainer (a Docker UI/facilitator). It all works perfectly and has a marginal cost of about zero, since I need the NAS in any case.
But I wouldn't give the keys of the house to Claude or any LLM for that matter. When needed, I ask them questions and type commands myself. It's not that hard.
- I use coding agents for similar kind of problem very frequently. It makes wonders debugging obscure system issues related to components that I have no faintest idea about. Also building a homelab very soon. I think you may find this project useful: https://github.com/av/harbor
- I also built a "devops" agent on top of claude code like that - I deployed it on my server and let it debug all the gnarly infra issues for me.
I route it through a familiar interface like slack tho as I don't like to ssh from phone or w/e using a tool I built - https://www.claudecontrol.com/
- I’ve also found AI to be super helpful for self-hosting but in a different way. I set up a Pocketbase instance with a Lovable-like app on top (repo here: https://github.com/tinykit-studio/tinykit) so I can just pull out my phone, vibecode something, and then instantly host it on the one server with a bunch of other apps. I’ve built a bunch of stuff for myself (journal, CRM, guitar tuner) but my favorite thing has been a period tracker for a close friend who didn’t want that data tracked + sold.
- I’d suggest rather asking it to write you bash scripts
And ideally doing it via lxc or vm.
Extra complication but gives you something repeatable that you can stick on git
by FatherOfCurses
0 subcomment
- Telling us you did all this without sharing how is just bragging.
- I feel the same way. I now have around 7 projects hosted on a home server with Coolify + Cloudflare. Always worry about security and I have seen many posts related to self hosting on HN trending recently
- My workflow is a bit different in the sense I open my claude session in my laptop, at the directory of my ansible homelab code, and I also give Claude access to ssh to my homelab. But at the end it's almost the same, great tool.
- Others here mention Coolify for a homeserver. If you're looking for turnkey docker-compose based apps rather than just framework/runtime environments, I will recommend the runtipi project. I have found it to be simple and flexible. It offers an 'app store' like interface, and supports hosting your own app store. It manages certs and reverse proxy via traefik as well.
https://runtipi.io/
- I also liked using AI agents to do sysadmin stuff, especially with Nix OS. On top of Nix being great, the configuration of a system being files gives the agent good context on the current state the system is. Then when it does make changes, its great to be able to review its work via diffs.
by easterncalculus
1 subcomments
- Nice. This is a great start. The next steps are backups and regular security updates. The former is probably pretty easy with Claude and a provider like Backblaze, for updates I wonder if "check for security issues with my software and update anything in need" will work well (and most importantly, how consistently). Alternatively, getting the AI to threat model and perform any docker hardening measures.
Then someday we self-host the AI itself, and it all comes together.
- I have a similar experience when I found out that claude code can use ssh to conect to remote server and diagnose any sysadmin issue there. It just feels really empowered.
by sprainedankles
0 subcomment
- Impeccable timing, I finally got around to putting some old hardware to use and getting a home assistant instance (and jellyfin, and immich, and nextcloud, ...) set up over winter break. Claude (and tailscale) saved hours of my time and enabled me to build enough momentum to get things configured. It's now feasible for me to spend 15-20 minutes knocking down homeserver tasks that I otherwise would've ignored. Quite fun!
- What I’d really like is to run the admin interface for an app on a self hosted system behind firewalls, and push read replicas out into the cloud. But I haven’t seen a database where the master pushes data to the replicas instead of the replicas contacting the master. Which creates some pretty substantial tunneling problems that I don’t really want on my home network.
Is there a replica implementation that works in the direction I want?
- I recently got a zimaboard2 and have been blown away how powerful it is, x86 and 16GB I think it was around 250$. I have it running proxmox. Dedicated GPU for transcoding, all working out of the box with the ZimaOS.. And no AI needed.
by sciences44
0 subcomment
- Interesting subject, thank you! I have a cluster of 2 Orange Pis (16 GB RAM each) plus a Raspberry Pi. I think it's high time to get them back on my desk. I never had time to get very far with the setup due to a lack of time. It took so long to write the Ansible scripts/playbooks, but with Claude Code, it's worth a try now. So thanks for the article; it makes me want to dust it off!
by pixelbyindex
0 subcomment
- I also started started experimenting with self-hosting in the last few years. Started with a simple Plex server, then gradually evolved my little setup into a handful of open-source apps that now cover most of what I use during my day to day.
There are a few important things to consider, like unstable IPs, home internet limits, and the occasional power issue. Cloud providers felt overpriced for what I needed, especially once storage was factored in.
In the end, I put together a small business where people can run their own Mac mini with a static IP: https://www.minimahost.com/
I’m continuing to work on it while keeping my regular software job. So far, the demand is not very high, or perhaps I am not great at marketing XD
- I have a hard time reading things like “The last one is the real unlock.” or “That alone justified the box.” without immediately thinking of an AI trying to explain something. Not to say this was written with one, but the frequency with which I see phrasing like this nowadays is skyrocketing...
by didntknowyou
0 subcomment
- idk exposing your home network to the world and trusting AI will produce secure code is not a risk I want to take
by Gualdrapo
2 subcomments
- One day when I have some extra bucks I'd try to get a home server running, but the idea of having something eating grid electricity 24/7 doesn't seem to play along well with this 3rd world budget. Are there some foolproof and not so costly off-grid/solar setups to look at (like a Raspberry-based thingy or similar)?
- I had problems with tailscale being flaky about a year ago and it would stop responding taking down networking with it. I've since ripped it out and went with a VPS based wireguard for all PCs and mobiles. Stable since then.
by austin-cheney
0 subcomment
- I have found that storage is up in price more than 60% from last year.
I am writing a personal application to simplify home server administration if anybody is interested: https://github.com/prettydiff/aphorio
- For me the most important benefit is that the agent can keep the docs up to date. When I do a change, I let it document what is changed, how and why.
- Great article! I think a paragraph on your backup strategy would make it even more complete and compelling, particularly given you put your passwords and photos in there.
- Is everyone just running claude code not even in a container, letting it go wild and change stuff?
- Instead of the vibe-admin approach, why not have the LLM write an Ansible playbook? At least its repeatable and auditable that way.
- I used Claude Code just yesterday in a similar way: to solve a computer problem that I previously would have tried googling.
I had a 30-year-old file on my Mac that I wanted to read the content of. I had created it in some kind of word processing software, but I couldn’t remember which (Nexus? Word? MacWrite? ClarisWorks? EGWORD?) and the file didn’t have an extension. I couldn’t read its content in any of the applications I have on my Mac now.
So I pointed CC at it and asked what it could tell me about the file. It looked inside the file data, identified the file type and the multiple character encodings in it, and went through a couple of conversion steps before outputting as clean plain text what I had written in 1996.
Maybe I could have found a utility on the web to do the same thing, but CC felt much quicker and easier.
- Remember: In all likelihood, your residential ISP does not permit you to operate a server.
Granted, that's rarely enforced, but if you're a stickler for that sort of thing, check your ISP's Acceptable Use Policy.
- I see why this is easy and fun, but is it really "self-hosting" if you are dependent on a $1200 a year AI-service to build and maintain it?
- To the tailscale promotion team: can you guys please dial it back? The half hidden ads are seriously annoying
- has any one experience using cloudflare tunnels in a (small scale - 5000 user/day) self hosted web service? I just got 2 dynabook XJ-40 (32 gb ram, 512 gb ssd) for 200 usd each and I'm going to replace my DO droplets with them (usd150+ per month). I plan to use cloudflare tunnel to make the service available to the internet without exposing my home network. Any downsides ? (besides that cloudflare will be MITM for the service but it is not a privacy focused business)
- This is great and echoes my experience. Although I would add a caveat that this mostly applies to solo work. Once you need to collaborate or operate on a team, many of limits of self-hosting return.
- System Concierge, not sysadmin.
- This is the reason why I am creating a Debian VM on my macOS to let Claude code in yolo mode to do some experiment:)
- Try Claude and LVM, Linux software RAID and partitions though, it's hilariously bad at it.
- All fine and great with Tailscale until you company places an iOS restriction on external VPNs and your work phone is also your primary phone :(
by HeartofCPU
0 subcomment
- Great until Claude decides to delete your storage and all your containers are gone
by reachableceo
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- Cloudron makes this even easier. Well worth 1.00 a day! Handles the entire stack (backups , monitoring , dns , ssl , updates ).
by tomashubelbauer
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- I have a love-hate relationship with Home Assistant. I love its mission and I love it in spirit, but whenever I need to add or change something in it, I don't love the process. Without disparaging the work already done on improving it in recent years, I still find the UI and UX to be lacking. Claude Code has been shifting my perception much closer to the love end of the axis, because it allows me to side-step the boring parts of managing my Home Assistant instance and it is able to carry out the changes I want very reliably.
I still struggle with letting go of writing code and becoming only a full-time reviewer when it comes to AI agents doing programming, but I don't struggle in the slightest with assuming the position of a reviewer of the changes CC does to my HA instance, delegating all the work to it. The progress I made on making my house smart and setting up my dashboards has skyrocketed compared to before I started using CC to manage HA via its REST and WS APIs.
- it's kind of fascinating, LLMs suddenly are making the Linux Desktop waaay more accessible, of all things.
All those fancy GUIs in Mac and Windows designed to be user friendly (but which most users hate and are baffled by anyway) are very hostile for models to access. But text configuration files? it's like a knife through butter for the LLMs to read and modify them. All of a sudden, Linux is MORE user friendly because you can just ask an LLM to fix things. Or even script them - "make it so my theme changes to dark at night and then back to light each morning" becomes something utterly trivial compared to the coding LLMs are being built to handle. But hey, if your OS really doesn't support something? the LLM can probably code up a whole app for you and integrate it in.
I think it's going to be fascinating to see if the power of text based interfaces and their natural compatibility with LLMs transfers over into an upswing in open source operating systems.
- Nope, never trust AI to do such things, it’s imminent to cause issues. Maybe as an assistant only but never installed on the same server and worse, the privilege to access/execute commands.
- Self hosting post. Tailscale.
Its comedic at this point.
- Oh my gosh, everything you want to host comes with a docker compose file that requires you to tweak maybe two settings. Caddy as your web proxy has the absolute simplest setup possible. You don't need AI to help you with this. You got this. You want to make sure you understand the basics so you (or your LLM doesn't do anything brain dead stupid). It's not that hard, you can do it!
- Opens with "self-hosting" and then brings claude code into the mix. You realize it's not actually running locally right? Privcy-wise that's a nightmare. A non-deterministic blackbox running in somebody's AI cloud is controlling your server. Congrats.
- I am in the process of doing the same. I have a Netbird mesh (Tailscale but open source) with 3 k3s nodes. They are geographically separated for HA.
Claude and Gemini have been instrumental in helping me understand the core concepts of kubernetes, how to tune all these enterprise applications for high latency, think about architecture etc...
My biggest "wow, wtf?" moment was ben I was discussing the cluster architecture with Claude. It asked: want me to start the files?
I thought it meant update the notes, so replied 'yes'.
It spit out 2 sh files and 5 YAMLs that completely bootstrapped my cluster with a full GitOps setup using ArgoCD.
Learning while having a 24/7 senior tutor next to me has been insane value.
- Basic question: If I wanted a simple self hosting solution for a bot with a database, what is the simplest solution / provider I can go with. This bot is just for me doesn't need to be accessible to the general public.
Thanks
by Dbtabachnik
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- How is readcheck any different than using raindrop.io?
- My stack. Claude code working
via CLIs: Coolify on hetzner
- why does a post from january 2026 recommend ubuntu version 22.04?
by CuriouslyC
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- Tailscale is pretty sweet. Cloudflare WARP is also pretty sweet, a little clunkier but you get argo routing for free and I trust Cloudflare for security.
- Any opinions on Readeck vs Karakeep?
- "easy and fun" as an ongoing bowel disease.
by kissgyorgy
0 subcomment
- My non-technical friend, never learned coding, doesn't know Linux, zero sysadmi experience does this and he can do anything and doesn't even know what Clause is doing. He learned some concepts recently like Docker, SSH, but that's basically it.
- how many times will I get clickbaited by some cool title only to see AI praise in the article and nothing more? It's tiring and happens way too often
related "webdev is fun again": claude.
https://ma.ttias.be/web-development-is-fun-again/
Also the "Why it matters" in the article. I thought it's a jab at AI-generated articles but it starts too look like the article was AI written as well
- none of you have what it takes to self host your perfect self hosting fantasy because most of you won't cooperate with others. keep waiting for that unicorn you wouldn't see standing right in front of you.
- I would also suggest the great Karakeep for read-it-later :)
- >Your home server's new sysadmin: Claude Code
Lol, no thank you. Btw do your knees hurt?
- Vibe-setting up a home network server with VaultWarden is beyond reckless. LLMs have tendency to overlook security in order to get things working. You are, thereby, exposing your passwords (and potentially your 2FA as bitwarden supports that) to the whole world. This is beyond stupid. Even before LLMs my main concern with setting up BitWarden on my own server was two folds: security and availability. LLMs doesn't fix the second point but they make the first point much worse.
- "piping everything to sudo bash makes a home server easier and fun"
- Umm, what happened to zero trust? Network security is not sufficient.
- My idea of fun is deeply tied to understanding how things work—learning them, then applying that knowledge in my own way, as simply as possible. That process gives me a sense of ownership and control, which is not something I get from an approach where AI does things for me that I do not understand.
by RicoElectrico
1 subcomments
- I just use Proxmox on Optiplex 3060 micro. On it, a Wireguard tunnel for remote admin. The ease of creating and tearing down dedicated containers makes it easy to experiment.
- Can the same thing be said for using docker compose etc on a VPS to host a web app? Ie you can get the ergonomic / ease of using Fly, Renderer?
Historically, managed platforms like Fly.io, Render, and DigitalOcean App Platform existed to solve three pain points:
1. Fear of misconfiguring Linux
2. Fear of Docker / Compose complexity
3. Fear of “what if it breaks at 2am?”
CLI agents (Claude Code, etc.) dramatically reduce (1) and (2), and partially reduce (3).
So the tradeoff has changed from:
“Pay $50–150/month to avoid yak-shaving”
→
“Pay $5–12/month and let an agent do the yak-shaving”
- I started self-hosting after noticing that my AWS bill increased from like $300 per month to $600 per month within a couple of years. When looking at my bill, 3/4 of the cost was 'AWS Other'; mostly bandwidth. I couldn't understand why I was paying so much for bandwidth given that all my database instances ran on the same host as the app servers and I didn't have any regular communication between instances.
I suspect it may have been related to the Network File System (NFS)? Like whenever I read a file on the host machine, it goes across the data-center network and charges me? Is this correct?
Anyway, I just decided to take control of those costs. Took me 2 weeks of part-time work to migrate all my stuff to a self-hosted machine. I put everything behind Cloudflare with a load balancer. Was a bit tricky to configure as I'm hosting multiple domains from the same machine. It's a small form factor PC tower with 20 CPU cores; easily runs all my stuff though. In 2 months, I already recouped the full cost of the machine through savings in my AWS bill. Now I pay like $10 a month to Cloudflare and even that's basically an optional cost. I strongly recommend.
Anyway it's impressive how AWS costs had been creeping slowly and imperceptibly over time. With my own machine, I now have way more compute than I need. I did a calculation and figured out that to get the same CPU capacity (no throttling, no bandwidth limitations) on AWS, I would have to pay like $1400 per month... But amortized over 4 years my machine's cost is like $20 per month plus $5 per month to get a static IP address. I didn't need to change my internet plan other than that. So AWS EC2 represented a 56x cost factor. It's mind-boggling.
I think it's one of these costs that I kind of brushed under the carpet as "It's an investment." But eventually, this cost became a topic of conversation with my wife and she started making jokes about our contribution to Jeff Bezos' wife's diamond ring. Then it came to our attention that his megayacht is so large that it comes with a second yacht beside it. Then I understood where he got it all from. Though to be fair to him, he is a truly great businessman; he didn't get it from institutional money or complex hidden political scheme; he got it fair and square through a very clever business plan.
Over 5 years or so that I've been using AWS, the costs had been flat. Meanwhile the costs of the underlying hardware had dropped to like 1/56th... and I didn't even notice. Is anything more profitable than apathy and neglect?
- "another few hundred USD for 8TB in NVMe SSD" lol
- Reminder: If you are using Tailscale or a VPS you aren't really self-hosting.
by holyknight
2 subcomments
- not with these hardware prices...
by maximgeorge
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- [dead]
- [dead]
by MORPHOICES
0 subcomment
- [flagged]