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.