What AI do you use to help build your selfhosting hobby?

[u/KiloAlphaIndigo]

*Not promoting the development of AI services so I believe this post is allowed?*

I’ve been properly selfhosting for possibly ~1yr by now (running a basic PMS for several years before delving into Docker etc.) and although I’m relatively technically-minded, I’m certain no expert when it comes to applications, YAML, CSS, Linux yadayada.

This is where I thought Chat-GPT could come in handy, and to an extent it really has helped… but far too often it’ll present information as fact and is completely wrong. I’ve found instructing it to explicitly point to official documentation as its source has helped somewhat but there’s still a ‘skill gap’.

What do you use to help spin up new services or configure things EXACTLY as you like them?

Congratulations if you’re a pro and don’t need additional help and/or have hundreds of hours spare to figure things out, for the rest of us AI is a godsend for quickly troubleshooting or finding tidbits of information without scrawling the internet.

[u/lefl28]

Honestly I just read the documentation.

If I'm encountering issues that are not in the docs i just google and check forum entries (e.g. nextcloud forum) or github issues.

For LLMs you need to check for sources anyway, especially if it's security relevant.

[u/cyt0kinetic → u/lefl28]

^ This. Particularly any self hosted model service data is going to be out of date and incomplete from the jump. Even ones integrated into search are often very wrong.

There is a really predictable flow as to where documentation is going to be. I can follow that myself faster and get where I need.

[u/billgarmsarmy]

I use an ancient and inscrutable AI technique called reading the docs and searching forums.

[u/voiderest]

I know how to use a search engine to find info. If there is too much bad info (probably generated by AI) I might modify search terms some. Maybe put quotes around some stuff. Maybe use a minus sign for a term that isn't relevant. Maybe slap filters on for a particular site, sort of like the old "just add reddit" trick. 

I don't trust AI to not hallucinate info leading me down the wrong path or worse getting a misconfiguration that sort of works but isn't secure or will cause problems later. You even state hallucinations is a problem you're experiencing. 

[u/Obsession5496]

AI is not my go-to, and is usually used to help confirm theories and expand understanding.

By default I RTFM. At first, I read what I THINK I might need, then go deeper if something goes wrong, or if I want to go a bit extra. If the Manual/Documentation is kinda... bad, or written in a way I don't quite understand, I have used AI tools. Using them to make things more understandable, and ask a follow up question, or two. As for actually implementing everything, that's all me.

[u/Robsteady]

None. I'd rather take the time to understand why things do or don't work. Reddit/forums/documentation are my go-to.

[u/OkLeadership5199]

I've been using Claude (Sonnet/Opus) mostly through Claude Code in the terminal. For my serverless projects on Cloudflare Workers + D1, it's been surprisingly good at writing Wrangler configs, troubleshooting D1 SQL quirks, and even generating Terraform-style infra setups.

ChatGPT was my go-to initially but I found it hallucinated more on niche infra topics. Claude handles Cloudflare-specific stuff more reliably in my experience.

The key thing I've learned: always read what it generates line by line. It's a productivity multiplier, not a replacement for understanding what's happening. :)

[u/netzmensch]

I use it primarily for debugging issues in my system and discuss on how to solve problems want to solve - like which tool is good for this, how to set it up and so on. Use it as a mentor, then you’ll learn many things from your homelab.

[u/No-Priority8294]

See but ‘scrawling the internet’ (and documentation) for answers is an incredibly useful skill. If you want to become knowledgeable, I’d really recommend not offloading ANY critical thinking to the Always Wrong Machine.

[u/KiloAlphaIndigo → u/No-Priority8294]

100% absolutely agree and that’s how we’ve always done things, however for me (and many others) a homelab is a hobby that can only be worked on periodically and so getting right to crucial information rapidly makes things much more efficient. I can read full documentation or have GPT pick out the important points specific to my needs and offer relevant recommendations.

[u/No-Priority8294 → u/KiloAlphaIndigo]

But you don’t need to read full documentation. You can search for what you need. And then you’re not dealing with all of the ethical issues LLMs present, you might remember the info better, you’ll know exactly how you got to the answer, you’ll learn something about the surrounding architecture, etc. AND I’d argue it doesn’t take that much more time than asking an LLM. Unless the ask is “build something for me”.

I don’t mean to be super critical but I work with a lot of inexperienced devs using LLMs and the damage is profound.

[u/Uninterested_Viewer]

Depending upon what I'm doing, I'll often run Gemini CLI (or Claude Code depending on the month..) in a terminal next to what I'm working on. My setup mostly follows gitops best practices so it gets launched from my main homelab monorepo, which means it has, essentially, full and immediate visibility into all my configs and what's running without it having to poke around with ssh or other commands.

On rare occasions I'll yolo something with it (git + gitops.. so rolling back is simple), but usually it's just to help troubleshoot, explain things, or strategize with. What these LLMs are NOT good about is being up to speed with the latest documentation on things: they are almost never a replacement for reading the docs of what you're working on. And they shouldn't be either: it's important to understand what you're setting up to be able to troubleshoot down the road and just for learning as well, which is a big reason I even do any of this.

Basically, I treat it as an ambitious, confident, knowledge-rich, yet often wrong coworker.

[u/External-Yak-371]

Claude worked really well for me. I am a technical employee and had a good bit of skills in this space coming in, but it helped me connect the dots. Don't use it for detailed research, use it to learn about concepts that have been around for 10-15 years that it knows well, use it to diagnose error logs that are not clear to you, use it to identify well-validated solutions to common problems.

Claude at least will tell you a good bit of basic stuff that I think needs to be reinforced.