Marco Barulli's avatar
Marco Barulli _@marco.barulli.it 1 week ago
Today I completed another small step forward in the de-Googling process I started this summer: migrating from Notion to a local instance of Anytype! I was able to reach this milestone thanks only to my "collaboration" with Claude. I have always been intimidated by system administration tasks, and for decades that kept me away from Linux and self-hosting, pushing me further into the arms of Google, Amazon, Notion, etc. AI, and Claude Code in particular, changed all of this. I deployed a StartOS server running a Bitcoin full node, LND and Alby Hub Lightning services, a Nostr relay that keeps a copy of all my Nostr activity, an Immich server where I moved 30+ years of family photos for all family members, and now Anytype as well. I configured secure access to these services both from my home network and remotely, thanks to a static IP and a robust firewall and router configuration. On top of this, there are scripts that ingest utility bills and generate household expense reports, monitor Bitcoin wallets, manage local and remote encrypted backups (to Hetzner data centers in Germany), make backup copies of notebooks created on my Boox e-ink tablet, etc. I repeat, given my limited technical skills, none of this would have been possible without Claude's support. I never would have ventured into this level of complexity. And it's not over yet: other decentralized services are bound to follow. If I did it, you can do it too! image

Replies (7)

Ryan Wilkins's avatar
Ryan Wilkins ryan@deadfrog.net 1 week ago
Thanks for sharing! Even as a seasoned Linux user and administrator, I find AI to be a real enabler. Numerous tasks that I would not have spent the time on before have suddenly seen the light. I’ve also found Claude Sonnet and Opus to be really good at finding and correcting system issues. Just yesterday I was trying to connect an embedded Linux development board to my employer’s VPN to get access to our GitLab server. The VPN connected but none of the traffic was flowing through and I didn’t really know why. I started OpenCode and told Claude about it. It checked a few things, asked to make some changes, tested, and fixed the problem. The cost was $0.65. I would have cost the company more time and money trying to figure it out myself. In the end, I learned something for when a similar problem happens in the future which either I can solve or turn Claude on to it. Regarding de-Googling, my employer is a Google shop so I can’t escape it there, but for my personal stuff, I rarely use Google for anything anymore and prefer to self-host as much as possible. I even host my own mail server at home. I realize someday that’s going to bite me, and it already has, but the outages have been few and far between so I accept that sometimes my email isn’t going to be operational. That’s OK. We’re heavily into the Apple ecosystem in my house, but that doesn’t stop me from storing my photos, and other things I’d rather not lose, locally on my Synology NAS. It’s not a perfect solution, but it does work. Doing things for yourself and being self-sufficient is a great mindset to have.
Bitpunk's avatar
Bitpunk 1 week ago
You should look into using Tailscale (or second option a VPN) to connect to your home network. Then you don't need to worry about fucking up your firewall on your own router and exposing ports to the outside world.
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