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Author here. Context + details that didn’t fit cleanly in the article:
This was a supervised experiment, not “hands off, let the AI run prod.”
I treated the AI as a junior sysadmin/operator with full read access and explicitly scoped write access, and I stayed accountable for architecture and decisions.
Setup (high level):
Single Raspberry Pi 5 running Debian
Self-hosted services (Nextcloud, finance tools, VPN, backups)
AI accessed the system via SSH, logs, config files, and command output
Tasks were given as concrete operational goals (“diagnose why X stopped working”, “make backups safer”, etc.)
What worked well:
Debugging real issues (DNS, IPv6 quirks, misconfigurations)
Writing small scripts and operational docs
Being extremely fast at “read unfamiliar system → form hypothesis → test”
What did not work well:
Anything involving long-term architectural judgment
Security decisions without explicit constraints
Situations where the right answer was “don’t touch this yet”
The biggest takeaway for me: this didn’t replace judgment, but it dramatically compressed the “thinking + doing” loop for ops work I already understand.
Happy to answer questions about failure modes, security boundaries, or how I constrained access.