Homelab Agent: your AI server will die while you're away. Plan for it

Homelab Agent is an MIT-licensed recipe for turning an x86-64 Ubuntu mini PC into an always-on Hermes server.

Optional modules include n8n for workflow automation, Pi-hole for local DNS, Uptime Kuma for service checks, Beszel for machine and container monitoring, Tailscale for remote access, Caddy for local routing, and encrypted restic backups.

The most useful part is not the service list. It is the explicit failure model. The documentation covers prompt injection, Docker-level host access, backup deletion, unencrypted LAN traffic, shared-network risk, secrets at rest, and container-update risk.

Nightly encrypted snapshots are pulled to a Mac using a restricted read-only key. The project also documents how to rebuild a dead machine from the repository plus the latest backup.

Even if your Hermes setup lives somewhere else, the controls transfer. Check your own setup against four questions:

1. Has a backup restore actually been tested?
2. Are service health, disk, memory, and temperature monitored?
3. Does your agent have only repository-specific deploy access?
4. Is there a written rebuild procedure that works from a blank machine?

The catch: the repository calls itself a home-lab recipe, not a hardened production deployment. Review every script, secret, permission, and network rule before adopting it.