Episode 10: Self-Hosted Awesomeness

What we cover

• Some of our favorite self-hosted apps!
• Stephen's Pick: Hermes for a self-hosted memory and orchestration layer that sits in front of Claude and ChatGPT (but is self-hosted), complete with Telegram integration (and other chat apps).
• Geoff's Picks: Frigate for machine-learning-powered NVR and object detection, and Healthchecks for catching silently failed cron jobs.
• Adam's Picks: Pangolin as a self-hosted alternative to Cloudflare Tunnels, and Pi-hole for whole-network ad blocking, with a detour into Technitium and NextDNS as alternatives.
• Alex's Picks (and honorable mentions): Karakeep (formerly Hoarder) for archiving links, and Paperless-ngx for document management, as well as Dawarich for location history and Termix for SSH/your other connection needs.

In this episode, the BitFlip crew brings their favorite, must-run self-hosted apps, and to keep things interesting hometown favorites like Home Assistant, Plex, and Jellyfin explicitly off the table.

Stephen walks through Hermes, a self-hosted layer that sits in front of Claude and ChatGPT and keeps context and memory persistent across conversations, regardless of which backend model is doing the work. He talks about linking it to Telegram for on-the-go note-taking, running it in its own VM and VLAN out of caution, and his early experiments with spinning up actual sub-agents for specialized tasks.

Geoff shares his two picks: Frigate, a machine-learning-powered NVR that handles object detection for security cameras with hardware acceleration, and Healthchecks, a dead-simple way to catch cron jobs and backups that fail silently. Adam presses him on Frigate's acceleration options and some clever automation ideas, while Geoff explains how Healthchecks (paired with Runitor) has saved him from finding out about broken jobs the hard way.

After that, Adam unpacks his own picks: Pangolin, which he describes as self-hosted Cloudflare Tunnels with built-in authentication and reverse proxy features, and Pi-hole for whole home ad blocking. That leads into a debate with Adam and Geoff about Pangolin's shift toward a business-backed license, and a side-by-side of Pi-hole, Technitium, and NextDNS for DNS filtering.

Finally, Geoff relays a few of Alex's picks: Karakeep (formerly Hoarder) for archiving and tagging saved links and Paperless-ngx for scanning and organizing documents. Geoff also shares some honorable mentions of Dawarich for location history recording and tracking and Termix for SSH'ing on the go.

Tags: self-hosted AI agents, Hermes, Frigate, NVR, object detection, Healthchecks, cron monitoring, Pangolin, Cloudflare Tunnels, Pi-hole, Technitium, NextDNS, Karakeep, Paperless-ngx, Dawarich, Termix

Links

• Hermes:
  • https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/
  • https://github.com/nousresearch/hermes-agent
• Frigate:
  • https://frigate.video
  • https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate/
• Healthchecks:
  • https://healthchecks.io
  • https://github.com/healthchecks/healthchecks
  • Runitor - https://github.com/bdd/runitor
• Pangolin:
  • https://pangolin.net/
  • https://github.com/fosrl/pangolin
• Pi-hole:
  • https://pi-hole.net/
  • https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole
• Karakeep:
  • https://karakeep.app/
  • https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep
• Paperless-NGX:
  • https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/
  • https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx
• Dawarich:
  • https://dawarich.app/
  • https://github.com/Freika/dawarich
• Termix:
  • https://github.com/Termix-SSH/Termix