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CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

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Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#361

Post by tomashubelbauer »

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.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#362

Post by mschild »

johnisgood wrote: post #334
duckmysick wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineering is a broad spectrum where we can move up and down its abstraction ladder. Using off-the-shelf tools and even third-party providers is fine. I don't have to do everything from scratch - after all, I didn't write my own text editor. I'm also happy to download prepacked and preconfigured software on my Linux distro instead of compiling and adding them to PATH manually. I could , I just choose not to…

That is a strawman though, and I am not sure why all replies assume extremes all the time. Nobody said do everything from scratch. The point is: basic networking (port forwarding, WireGuard) should not be beyond someone's capability as a software engineer. "I use apt instead of compiling" is a time tradeoff. "I can't configure a VPN" is a skill gap. These are not equivalent. If you choose convenience for whatever rea…

"I can't configure a VPN" and "I don't want to configure a VPN" are 2 entirely different things. Mind you I have no idea how complex tailscale setup is in comparison.

I'm in the middle of setting up my own homeserver. Still deciding on what/if I want to expose to the internet and not just local network and while setting everything up and tinkering is part of the fun for me. I get some people just want results that they can rely on. Tailscale, while not a perfect option, is still an option and if they're fine with the risk profile I can understand sacrificing some security for it.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#363

Post by mfru »

prmoustache wrote: post #356
xnickb wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Headscale is a thing

Headscale is only really useful if you need to manage multiple users and/or networks. If you only have one network you want to have access to and a small number of users/devices it only increases the attack surface over having one wireguard listening because it has more moving parts.

I think the most important thing about Tailscale is how accessible it is. Is there a GUI for Wireguard that lets me configure my whole private network as easily as Tailscale does?

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#364

Post by duckmysick »

johnisgood wrote: post #334
duckmysick wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineering is a broad spectrum where we can move up and down its abstraction ladder. Using off-the-shelf tools and even third-party providers is fine. I don't have to do everything from scratch - after all, I didn't write my own text editor. I'm also happy to download prepacked and preconfigured software on my Linux distro instead of compiling and adding them to PATH manually. I could , I just choose not to…

That is a strawman though, and I am not sure why all replies assume extremes all the time. Nobody said do everything from scratch. The point is: basic networking (port forwarding, WireGuard) should not be beyond someone's capability as a software engineer. "I use apt instead of compiling" is a time tradeoff. "I can't configure a VPN" is a skill gap. These are not equivalent. If you choose convenience for whatever rea…

I'd argue that no, managing your own VPN is not a basic skill - certainly not in the realms of software engineering (more like network engineering).

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#366

Post by johnisgood »

duckmysick wrote: post #364
johnisgood wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a strawman though, and I am not sure why all replies assume extremes all the time. Nobody said do everything from scratch. The point is: basic networking (port forwarding, WireGuard) should not be beyond someone's capability as a software engineer. "I use apt instead of compiling" is a time tradeoff. "I can't configure a VPN" is a skill gap. These are not equivalent. If you choose convenience for whatever rea…

I'd argue that no, managing your own VPN is not a basic skill - certainly not in the realms of software engineering (more like network engineering).

WireGuard is ~10 lines of config and wg genkey. Calling that "network engineering" is a stretch.

The siloing of basic infrastructure knowledge into "not my discipline" is part of the problem. Software gets deployed somewhere: understanding ports, keys, and routing at a basic level is not specialized knowledge.

Honestly, if 10 lines of config is "network engineering", then the bar for software engineering has dropped considerably.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#367

Post by nickdothutton »

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.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#368

Post by [deleted] »

Frotag wrote: post #108
drnick1 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather expose a Wireguard port and control my keys than introduce a third party like Tailscale. I am not sure why people are so afraid of exposing ports. I have dozens of ports open on my server including SMTP, IMAP(S), HTTP(S), various game servers and don't see a problem with that. I can't rule out a vulnerability somewhere but services are containerized and/or run as separate UNIX users. It's the way the Inter…

Speaking of Wireguard, my current topology has all peers talking to a single peer that forwards traffic between peers (for hole punching / peers with dynamic ips). But some peers are sometimes on the same LAN (eg phone is sometimes on same LAN as pc). Is there a way to avoid forwarding traffic through the server peer in this case?

[deleted]

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#369

Post by johnisgood »

mschild wrote: post #362
johnisgood wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a strawman though, and I am not sure why all replies assume extremes all the time. Nobody said do everything from scratch. The point is: basic networking (port forwarding, WireGuard) should not be beyond someone's capability as a software engineer. "I use apt instead of compiling" is a time tradeoff. "I can't configure a VPN" is a skill gap. These are not equivalent. If you choose convenience for whatever rea…

"I can't configure a VPN" and "I don't want to configure a VPN" are 2 entirely different things. Mind you I have no idea how complex tailscale setup is in comparison. I'm in the middle of setting up my own homeserver. Still deciding on what/if I want to expose to the internet and not just local network and while setting everything up and tinkering is part of the fun for me. I get some people just want results that th…

It seems like we do agree. :)

For a homeserver:

- SSH with key-only auth, exposed directly. This has worked for decades. Consider non-standard port to reduce log noise (not security, just quieter logs), fail2ban if you want

- Access internal services via SSH tunnels or just work on the box directly

- If exposing HTTP(S): reverse proxy (nginx/caddy) with TLS, rate limiting

- Databases, admin panels, monitoring - access via SSH, not public (ideally)

You do not need a VPN layer if you are comfortable with SSH. It has been battle-tested longer than most alternatives.

The fun part of tinkering is also learning what is actually necessary vs. cargo-culted advice. You will find most "security hardening" guides are overkill for a homeserver with sensible defaults.

Re: CLI agents make self-hosting on a home server easier and fun

#370

Post by pacija »

drnick1 wrote: post #26
simonw wrote: post #3

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 devi…

I'd rather expose a Wireguard port and control my keys than introduce a third party like Tailscale. I am not sure why people are so afraid of exposing ports. I have dozens of ports open on my server including SMTP, IMAP(S), HTTP(S), various game servers and don't see a problem with that. I can't rule out a vulnerability somewhere but services are containerized and/or run as separate UNIX users. It's the way the Inter…

Of course. A port is a door. If service listening on a port is secure and properly configured (e.g. ssh), whole Internet can bang on it all day every day, they won't let through without proper key. Same for imap, xmpp or any othet service.

But what can you expect from people who provide services but won't even try to understand how they work and how they are configured as it's 'not fun enough', expecting claude code to do it right for them.

Asking AI to do thing you did 100 times before is OK I guess. Asking AI to do thing you never did and have no idea how it's properly done - not so much I'd say. But this guy obviously does not signal his sysadmin skills but his AI skills. I hope it brings him the result he aimed for.

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