Why I Run 22 Docker Services at Home

Somewhere in my living room, a 2018 gaming PC is running 22 Docker containers, processing 15,000 emails through a local LLM, and managing the finances of a real business. It was never supposed to do any of this. I run a one-person software consultancy in the Netherlands; web development, 3D printing, and consulting. Last year, I started building an AI system to help me manage it all. Eight specialized agents handling email triage, financial tracking, infrastructure monitoring, and scheduling. Every piece of inference runs locally. No cloud APIs touching my private data. This post covers the hardware, what it actually costs, and what I'd do differently if I started over. The Setup: Three Machines, One Mesh Network The entire system runs on three machines connected via Tailscale mesh VPN: docker-host A PC I assembled from leftover parts. Over the years, as I upgraded my main gaming machine, the old CPUs, RAM sticks, and motherboards piled up. Eventually, I had enough to build a second co