Who Runs This Thing?
Agentic Homelab
Ashley and Ethan explore how an AI operator can provide the expertise needed to keep home services reliable and secure.
A more ambitious homelab. Far less work to run it.
Use an AI operator to build sophisticated services, maintain the whole deployment, and keep your data recoverable as it grows.
Listen
Audiobook
A narrated guide to using an AI operator to build and maintain reliable, secure home services.
Chapters
Build in this order.
Each step gives the next one a safe foundation.
- 0
Decide
Goals, risks, and stop rules
- 1
Set up your admin computer
Recovery, records, and AI operator access
- 2
Set up Linux
A clean, recoverable server
- 3
Fix the network path
DNS, remote access, and backup power
- 4
Protect the data
Storage, accounts, backup, and restore
- 5
Add services
Containers and household applications
- 6
Add optional tools
Media and home automation
- 7
Keep it working
Updates, alerts, and recovery drills
A few rules keep the setup recoverable.
You decide. The AI operator gathers facts.
You choose what matters and what is off limits. The AI operator inventories the systems with read-only access.
Access controls do the safety work.
Give the AI operator its own account, narrow permissions, staged changes, and tests. Do not give it general administrator access.
Approve one bounded job at a time.
Let the AI operator finish safe work without constant prompts. Stop for destruction, new access, conflicting facts, or failed tests.
Prove that a server can be rebuilt.
Call it replaceable only after its settings, data, accounts, and recovery steps have worked on a clean system.
Start here, then follow the chapters in order.
00Orientation
What you are building and in what order
The finished result, the build order, and the test that ends each phase.
Read chapter01Phase 0
Work with your AI operator
How you and your AI operator work together, what can go wrong, and how to test the limits.
Read chapter02Phase 1
Set up your admin computer
Local recovery, remote access, complete work records, and the first AI operator access test.
Read chapter