2026 is the Year of Self-hosting

Summary

2026 is the Year of Self-hosting by Jordan Fulghum, January 2026 Your home server's new sysadmin: Claude Code I have flirted with self-hosting at home for years. I always bounced off it - too much time spent configuring instead of using. It just wasn't fun. That changed recently. The reason is simple: CLI agents like Claude Code make self-hosting on a cheapo home server dramatically easier and actually fun. This is the first time I would recommend it to normie/software-literate people who never really wanted to sign up to become a sysadmin and stress about uptime of core personal services. Why now is different Three things converged: Shift Why it matters Cheap, capable mini PCs You can buy a silent, low-power Linux box for less than a weekend trip Tailscale Secure networking without port forwarding or networking brain damage Claude Code You no longer need to remember Docker syntax, Compose quirks, or config formats The last one is the real unlock. Instead of Googling "docker compose vaultwarden caddy reverse proxy" and stitching together five blog posts from 2021, I just let Claude figure out (up to you how much you care to really understand the technical details!). The hardware Fits in one hand. Check that central cooling unit! I previously ran my Plex server on an M1 Mac mini, which was great, but as I wanted to add more services I found myself running a lot of resource-hungry VMs (via UTM) and it was getting complicated anytime the Mac rebooted. So, I picked up a Beelink Mini N150. It is small, quiet, and just barely sips power. I paid around $379 for the device and another few hundred USD for 8TB in NVMe SSD. It's pretty wild how accessible these mini PCs have become in recent years! The basic flow This is the entire workflow: Step Install Linux Flash USB, install Ubuntu Server (I picked 22.04 LTS) Install Tailscale Get it on your private network to make your life easier SSH in From my laptop, anywhere Install Claude Code On the server itself Ask for what I want...