Roadmap

🛣️ The Homelab Journey¶

A vertical road map of our self-hosting adventure

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🎯 Mission: The Destination Ahead¶

Our mission is to create the ultimate self-hosting platform that makes running your own services as simple as possible while maintaining security, reliability, and flexibility.

Why This Journey?

🖥️ Use existing hardware - Make the most of what you already have
🚀 Get up and running fast - Deploy services in minutes, not hours
🔐 Enable data sovereignty and control - Keep your data yours
⚙️ Enable easy customization - Adapt to your specific needs
🔗 Connect open source projects together - Unified ecosystem
📱 Support multiple application domains - Home automation, media, productivity, development, security
🛡️ Build resilient systems - Offline-first capabilities for network independence
📚 Documentation and guides - Clear instructions for getting started

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✅ MILE 1: Foundation & Infrastructure¶

Status: COMPLETED • Date: 2024-Q4

🐳 Docker Swarm Deployment

Production-ready orchestration with 25+ services
🔒 Automatic SSL & DNS

Traefik reverse proxy + Cloudflare integration
📊 Monitoring Stack

Prometheus + Grafana + Loki for full observability
🔧 Management CLI

Deploy and manage services with one command

Rest Stop Summary: Core platform infrastructure complete ✅

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✅ MILE 2: Essential Services (25 Deployed)¶

Status: COMPLETED • Services Live: 25

🏗️ Infrastructure Layer¶

✅ Technitium DNS - Local DNS server
✅ Traefik - Reverse proxy with automatic SSL
✅ Prometheus + Grafana - Metrics and dashboards
✅ Node Exporter - Host metrics collection
✅ cAdvisor - Container-level performance metrics
✅ NVIDIA GPU Exporter - GPU metrics and monitoring
✅ Speedtest Exporter - Network speed monitoring
✅ iperf3 Server + Exporter - Network performance testing
✅ Loki + Promtail - Log aggregation
✅ Uptime Kuma - Uptime monitoring
✅ Authentik - SSO (integrated with 8+ services)

🏠 Home & Productivity¶

✅ Homepage - Service dashboard
✅ Actual Budget - Personal finance
✅ Home Assistant + Node-RED - Smart home platform
✅ CryptPad - Encrypted collaboration
✅ Mealie - Recipe management

📷 Media & Photos¶

✅ PhotoPrism - AI-powered photo management
✅ Immich - High-performance photo backup
✅ Emby - Media streaming

🎬 Media Automation (The *arr Stack)¶

✅ Sonarr + Radarr + Whisparr + Prowlarr + Profilarr
✅ FlareSolverr - Cloudflare bypass for indexers
✅ qBittorrent + Deluge - Torrent clients
✅ SABnzbd + NZBGet - Usenet clients

🛡️ Prepper & Resilience¶

✅ Kiwix - Offline Wikipedia (119GB) + Project Gutenberg + Stack Overflow + Medical knowledge

🔐 Security & Privacy¶

✅ Vaultwarden - Password manager (with Authentik SSO)

🤖 AI & Development¶

✅ LibreChat - AI chat interface
✅ MLflow - ML experiment tracking

💾 Backup & Recovery¶

✅ Kopia - Automated encrypted backups to Backblaze B2

Rest Stop Summary: Production platform with 25 services ✅

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✅ MILE 3: Quality & Automation¶

Status: COMPLETED • Date: 2024-Q4

✅ Comprehensive test suite with TDD methodology
✅ GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline
✅ Automated testing, linting, and validation
✅ Semantic versioning and releases

Rest Stop Summary: Professional-grade development workflow ✅

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🚗 Current Location: Maintenance & Documentation¶

Status: IN PROGRESS

🔄 Keeping services updated and healthy
📚 Improving documentation
🧪 Expanding test coverage
🔍 Planning next destinations

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🗺️ The Road Ahead: Future Destinations¶

🎯 NEEDS (High Priority - Real Gaps to Fill)¶

Need / Current Gap	Solution	Why It Matters
Document Management & Archival No system for organizing scanned documents, PDFs, receipts, tax forms, contracts	Paperless-ngx	Long-term archival with OCR, tagging, full-text search, automated organization
File Sync, Calendar, & Contacts No unified cloud storage replacement or calendar/contacts synchronization	NextCloud	Self-hosted file sync across devices, calendar management, contacts storage, document collaboration
Source Code Hosting No local git repository with issue tracking and CI/CD capabilities	Forgejo (community-driven Gitea fork)	Self-hosted git repos, issue tracking, pull requests, built-in CI/CD pipelines
Offline AI Assistance LibreChat requires external API calls - no true offline AI capability	Ollama (integrates with LibreChat)	Run LLMs locally for offline AI assistance, privacy, no API costs
Offline Navigation Maps Kiwix has OSM Wiki documentation but not actual map tiles for GPS navigation	OpenStreetMap Tile Server	Render and serve map tiles locally for offline navigation and mapping apps
Offline Educational Content Wikipedia provides general knowledge but lacks structured K-12 curriculum with video lessons	Kolibri (Khan Academy content)	Structured learning paths, video lessons, interactive exercises, progress tracking
Web Page Archiving No way to preserve important websites before they disappear or change	ArchiveBox	Archive critical web pages, articles, and sites for offline reference and preservation

💭 NICE TO HAVE (Lower Priority - Potential Future Needs)¶

Possible Need / Gap	Solution	Why It Matters
Private Search Engine Reliance on external search engines that track queries	Searxng	Meta-search engine that aggregates results without tracking or profiling
Family GPS Tracking No way to locate family members or track device locations for safety	Traccar	Real-time GPS tracking, geofencing, location history
Pantry & Grocery Inventory Mealie handles recipes but not pantry inventory, expiration tracking, shopping lists	Grocy	Track groceries, expiration dates, automate shopping lists, reduce food waste
Ebook Library Management Kiwix has Project Gutenberg but no management for personal ebook collections	Calibre-Web	Organize, tag, and read personal ebook collections with web interface
Knowledge Base / Wiki CryptPad handles collaboration but not structured wiki documentation	Bookstack	Organized wiki with books, chapters, pages for structured documentation
PDF Manipulation No self-hosted tools for merging, splitting, converting, or editing PDFs	Stirling-PDF	Comprehensive PDF toolkit for all manipulation tasks
Personal CRM No system for tracking relationships, interactions, and personal contacts	Monica	Remember important dates, track conversations, manage personal relationships
RSS Feed Aggregation No centralized way to follow blogs, news, and content without algorithms	FreshRSS	Decentralized news reading, control your feed, offline reading
Container Registry No private registry for custom Docker images	Harbor	Store and scan custom container images, vulnerability scanning
Web-based IDE No browser-based code editing environment	Code-Server (VS Code in browser)	Code from any device, remote development environment
Collaborative Security No crowdsourced threat intelligence or IP reputation	Crowdsec	Block IPs based on community threat intelligence
ROM & Game Library No management system for retro game ROMs	Romm	Organize and manage retro gaming library
Automated Container Updates Manual service updates required	Watchtower	Automatically pull and update container images