Homelab

The problem

A 4-thread Pentium with 3.7 GB of RAM, behind CGNAT with no way to open ports. It still serves 10 public services under my domain, with HTTPS, backups and monitoring, at zero cost.

Highlights

1. 01Secure exposure via Cloudflare Tunnel (no open ports), private access over Tailscale, UFW and fail2ban.
2. 02Services on Docker and systemd: media server, manga reader, Notebook (my AI-powered notes, open source) and more; timer-based backups.
3. 0324/7 OpenClaw agent (webchat and Telegram) with 41 procedure skills: deployments, maintenance, reports and memory consolidation.
4. 04SMS gateway on a USB modem: whitelisted SMS commands and server health alerts every 5 minutes.
5. 05KVM virtualization: Rocky Linux with LVM and an unattended Windows Server 2022 install.

What I learned

• → 01Constraints teach: with no public IP or open ports I learned tunnels, DNS and how to expose services securely.
• → 02Automate what repeats: backups, alerts and reports with systemd timers instead of relying on memory.
• → 03An AI agent with memory and written procedures is far more useful than a chat: documentation is what makes it reliable.