Managing a multi-server home lab environment with custom OPNsense routing and multiple unRAID boxes generates a mountain of documentation. Recently, after deploying a high-availability Kea DHCP server and a web-based subnet editor, I decided to have a local AI model write up the project notes for me. I set up a test on my macOS workstation using LM Studio, connecting […]
Introduction Every homelabber’s worst nightmare is the day their network goes dark because of a single point of failure. For me, that day arrived when my UDM Pro’s SFP+ port failed silently — taking down Plex, HDHomeRun, Home Assistant, and every other service dependent on DHCP. The device had become the bottleneck for my entire local network. That failure sparked […]
How I turned a ULANZI TC001 into a living dashboard for RSS feeds, system alerts, and home automation. The Hardware At the center of this project is a ULANZI TC001 Smart Pixel Clock running AWTRIX 3 firmware v0.98. This isn’t your average smart display—it’s a programmable LED matrix clock that supports custom apps via MQTT, HTTP APIs, and even sound […]
AI Prompts — Knowledge Wiki Context Claude Needed to Do This Right Before any implementation, Claude needed to read the memory files at: ~/.claude/projects/-Users-kcossabo-Documents-Coding-Container-Managment/memory/ Specifically: – project_container_pipeline.md — the Gitea/Komodo workflow, compose.yml conventions, unRAID labels, known landmines – project_komodo_containers.md — server inventory, IP ranges, bridge names, Komodo field gotchas Without this context, Claude would generate generic compose files that don’t […]
Lessons — Knowledge Wiki What Broke Git dubious ownership error on NFS mount git init on /Volumes/knowledge failed with “detected dubious ownership” because the NFS mount is owned by a different UID than the Mac user. Fix: git config –global –add safe.directory /Volumes/knowledge Run this before any git operation on an NFS-mounted share. Git initialized as master, not main git […]
Knowledge Wiki Setup The Why Working with the AI, I am building many, many more digital assets (Containers, and other). Though this is very cool to be able to move at this speed, I need to keep track of what is being done. Working with an AI, you can be a very light coordinator to get to the solution, and […]
Lessons Learned — Dashy Reorganization What Failed and the Fix WebFetch returns a summary, not raw YAML Problem: WebFetch against http://home.cossaboon.net/conf.yml returned a prose summary of the config rather than the raw YAML. Claude’s content policy prevents verbatim reproduction of large files fetched from URLs. Fix: Use curl via Bash instead: curl -s http://10.10.15.11:8080/conf.yml This bypasses WebFetch entirely and returns […]
Dashy Dashboard Reorganization What it is Dashy is Selfhosting Homepage. Permits a single panel to all your local, self hosted containers. I started to use it, and liked it more that the other options like homepage or homer which are both good projects, Dashy just fit me better. With the workflow of using an AI to help build containers to […]
AI Prompts & Context — Dashy Reorganization What Context Claude Needed The live conf.yml URL — Dashy serves its config publicly at /conf.yml. Claude accessed this via curl http://10.10.15.11:8080/conf.yml. No credentials needed. SSH access to Dock of the Bay — root@10.10.15.1. This was already in the user’s SSH config / known hosts, so no password prompt was needed for ssh […]
Task 8 — Kea DHCP HA: Replacing the Simple with the Complex How a failing SFP+ port led me down a rabbit hole of enterprise DHCP, AI-assisted development, and a home network that now runs better than most small offices. The Incident That Started Everything It was a normal evening. Someone wanted to watch live TV via HDHomeRun on PLEX. […]
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