What we run
A practical look at the small, affordable infrastructure many of our team members run at home: AI agents, Docker services, development environments, and family automation for about $40/month.
What a typical Team Setup looks like
Across the team, personal setups tend to converge on a similar pattern. The goal is not to build elaborate homelabs but to run a small, dependable personal infrastructure that supports AI workflows, development, and everyday household services.
Below is a representative example of the kind of stack many of us run at home.
Hardware Foundation
- Ubiquiti networking stack: Provides the home network backbone with reliable routing, simple management, and clean VLAN/VPN support.
- Synology RackStation (e.g. RS822+ with Intel CPU + additional RAM): Acts as the central storage and service hub. Runs many Docker services while providing primary RAID-backed storage for the household.
- Raspberry Pi 5 (home servers): Small, energy-efficient machines used for lightweight services, automation tasks, and experimentation.
- GeeekPi Pi5 Rackmount (incl. I/O and SSD mount): Turns Raspberry Pi systems into practical mini-servers with proper cooling, front access, and SSD support.
- Umbrel (self-hosted app platform): Convenient platform for running and managing self-hosted applications on local servers.
Core AI Platform
- OpenClaw (primary agent framework): The central orchestration layer for agents, automations, and integrations.
- Claude API — Opus 4 / Sonnet 4 / Haiku 4: Main model stack used for writing, translation, structured output, and many agent-driven tasks.
- OpenAI — DALL-E 3 / Codex: DALL-E 3 is used for cover image generation, while Codex provides API-based code completion.
- DeepSeek Chat: Cost-effective reasoning model often used for architecture planning, system design drafts, and exploratory analysis.
- Gemini: Secondary model used for comparisons, cross-checks, and occasional research tasks.
- ElevenLabs (Scribe): Voice transcription system that converts voice notes into high-quality text.
Development Tools
- Claude Code (AI coding assistant — daily driver): Primary AI development environment. The $17/month subscription frequently replaces €100+ in API token usage.
- VirtualBox (local dev VMs): Used to run isolated development environments and reproducible local infrastructure.
- Ubuntu Server LTS (VM OS): Main development VM environment with full SSH and Docker access.
- Windows VM (compatibility testing): Used to verify behavior on Windows systems. Cheap legal keys are typically available via Gamers Outlet.
- Git + GitHub (version control): Backbone for source control, collaboration, and infrastructure-as-code.
Deployment & Hosting
- Hetzner CX23 VPS (€4.85/month — runs everything): A small but capable VPS that usually runs the entire public-facing stack.
- Docker + Docker Compose + Portainer (stack orchestration and container management): Containers handle nearly all services, with Portainer providing a convenient management interface.
- Traefik (reverse proxy, auto-SSL): Handles routing between services and automatically manages TLS certificates.
- Cloudflare (DNS, proxy, DDoS protection): Provides DNS management, edge proxying, and basic protection for exposed services.
- Supabase (database backend for OpenClaw skills): Managed Postgres backend used by many OpenClaw skills and services.
- Tailscale (encrypted mesh network): Creates a secure private network between home systems and cloud servers.
- Let's Encrypt via Traefik (auto-renewing SSL): Automatically provisions HTTPS certificates. Let's Encrypt deserves a shoutout for helping make strong encryption accessible and pushing HTTPS to become the default standard across the web.
Communication & Messaging
- WhatsApp (OpenClaw integration): Messaging interface used for agent commands and notifications.
- Telegram (OpenClaw integration): Alternative messaging interface for interacting with agents.
- Email — Fastmail ($5/month): Primary email provider with strong privacy, collaboration features, and unlimited address aliases.
- Discord (OpenClaw integration): Used for team communication and additional agent integrations.
Family Life Integration
- Home Assistant (smart home automation): Central automation system for lights, climate control, and household sensors.
- Mealie (meal planning and recipes): Family recipe manager and meal planning system.
- Todoist (task management): Shared task management integrated with agents.
- Paperless-ngx (document archive): OCR-based system for scanning and organizing household documents.
- Calibre Web Automated (ebook management): Personal ebook library with automated metadata and syncing.
- Audiobookshelf (audiobook server): Self-hosted audiobook library and streaming platform.
- Jellyfin (media server): Self-hosted streaming server for movies, shows, and personal media.
Cost Structure
- Hetzner CX23: ~€4.85/month for the primary VPS running the public stack.
- Fastmail: ~$5/month for email and collaboration tools.
- Claude Code: $17/month, often replacing €100+ in API token usage for development.
- AI APIs: Typically ~$5–15/month depending on usage.
- Cloudflare: Free tier is sufficient for most setups.
- Tailscale: Free tier covers typical personal deployments.
- Everything else: Free or negligible.
Total: roughly $35–45/month for a full personal infrastructure covering AI workflows, development tooling, private cloud services, and household automation.
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See our Uses page for a full list of everything we run, including affiliate links.