Digital Sovereignty
Control, autonomy, and resilience. No platform should hold your data or choices hostage. This is my self-hosted infrastructure, the Hermes agent ecosystem that runs on it, and the philosophy behind it.
The Ethos
Ownership
When you self-host, you own your data. No terms-of-service can revoke access to your photos, your calendar, your tasks. The cloud is just someone else's computer.
Autonomy
No algorithmic feed decides what you see. No platform change removes features you depend on. Your tools adapt to you, not the other way around.
Resilience
When a third-party service shuts down, you lose everything. Self-hosted services persist as long as you maintain them — and you can back them up, migrate them, or fork them.
Intentional Friction
Self-hosting requires effort. That friction is a feature — it forces conscious choices about what technology you allow into your life. No passive consumption.
Infrastructure
Hardware
Legion (RTX 3090, local LLM inference) · Raspberry Pi 5 (Kodi) · Heltec V4 + T1000-E (mesh nodes) · Fairphone 6 (LineageOS)
Virtualization
Proxmox VE · VM200 (Forgejo, Baikal, Vikunja) · VM201 (lbr8 Forgejo) · VM202 (Hermes Agent) · VM204 (Media)
Networking
Tailscale mesh · AdGuardHome (DNS-level blocking, Hagezi lists) · Gluetun/ProtonVPN · Caddy reverse proxy
DigitalOcean
Public-facing droplet for lbr8.tech and geckods.dev · Umami analytics
Self-Hosted Services
DNS-level ad/tracker blocking across all devices via Tailscale
Virtualization platform — multiple VMs for different service groups
Self-hosted Git (internal + lbr8 public)
Task management (API-integrated with Hermes)
CalDAV/CardDAV calendar and contacts
Photo backup and management (Google Photos replacement)
Fitness tracking (Strava replacement, GPX pipeline)
Music streaming (Spotify replacement)
Media server for movies, TV, curated YouTube
TV media center with CEC control
Smart home automation, RF/IR blaster, floor lamp
RSS reader (news curation, YouTube feed monitoring)
YouTube frontend (privacy, no tracking)
Audiobook and podcast server
VPN container for selective traffic routing
Mesh VPN connecting all devices and servers
Privacy-first web analytics (no cookies, no third-party)
What It Replaces
| Self-Hosted | Replaces |
|---|---|
| Immich | Google Photos |
| Endurain | Strava |
| Navidrome | Spotify |
| Jellyfin | Netflix, YouTube |
| Vikunja | Todoist, Asana |
| Baikal | Google Calendar, Contacts |
| Forgejo | GitHub |
| Miniflux | Feedly, Google Reader |
| AdGuardHome | Nothing (no commercial equivalent at DNS level) |
| Audiobookshelf | Audible |
Hermes Agent
Running on this infrastructure is Hermes — a personal AI agent ecosystem with 80+ skills, domain agents for finance/fitness/food, nightly survey pipeline, and decentralized networking experiments. It orchestrates daily life through Telegram, integrates with every self-hosted service, and maintains persistent memory across sessions. A local Qwen model running on the Legion workstation (RTX 3090) powers Hermes, keeping all inference on-premises — no cloud API dependency for the agent's core reasoning.
Architecture
User Layer
Telegram (primary), CLI, web dashboard, voice (OpenLive)
Agent Core
Hermes Agent · 80+ skills · Cron orchestration · Session management · Persistent memory
Domain Agents
Expense tracking, budget monitoring, nightly financial check-ins via Telegram
Workout tracking, cycling data pipeline, nightly exercise check-ins
Recipe management, pantry tracking (par-level FIFO), nightly food check-ins
External Services
Vikunja · Baikal (CalDAV) · Endurain · Mealie · AdGuardHome · Home Assistant · Immich · Miniflux · Invidious · Jellyfin · Forgejo
Infrastructure
Proxmox VE (VM202) · SQLite (state.db) · Honcho (conversation context) · LiteLLM (model routing) · Ollama (local LLM)
Skill Categories
Finance (Firefly III), Fitness (Endurain + wger), Food (Mealie), Books (BookWyrm), Activity (ActivityWatch)
Nightly survey (5-question Telegram), nightly planning, morning protocol (push-ups + meditation gate), morning briefing, daily planning
Backup freshness monitor, nightly security scan, git sync monitor, infra architecture wiki, offline task queue
Protocol cards, client onboarding, source finder, tech context
Agentic Personal OS (mode-driven), domain agent architecture, life-tracking integrations, thought wiki
YouTube semantic queue, movies/TV tracking, self-hosted music pipeline
Short-term tasks, price monitoring, product research, bicycle maintenance, indoor hydroponics
WoCL moderation bot, liberatory technology design
Notable Work
Reticulum Mesh Network
Building out resilient decentralized networks for community empowerment. LoRa mesh network with solar-powered relay nodes.
Nightly Survey Pipeline
A multi-thread Telegram delivery system: the main thread gets daily recap + mood/reflection, separate threads get domain check-ins (exercise, food, finance), and a planning thread gets tomorrow's calendar + TODO list.
YouTube Curation System
AdGuardHome blocks YouTube 24/7 on all devices. A nightly cron curates from Miniflux RSS + Invidious, delivers to Telegram for approval, downloads approved videos via yt-dlp to Jellyfin. No content on screens without conscious choice.
Consulting
I help others achieve digital sovereignty through lbr8.tech — protocol cards, a liberation agent, and one-on-one consulting. If you're interested in taking control of your technology, get in touch.