{"slug": "hn-homebrain-your-private-local-cloud-agent-wired-into-everything", "title": "HN: HomeBrain – Your private local cloud, agent wired into everything", "summary": "HomeBrain, a new open-source appliance from developer oalterg, combines Nextcloud, Home Assistant, Vaultwarden, and a local AI agent into a single private cloud device with no subscriptions or cloud accounts. The system, which runs on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS or Raspberry Pi OS, features a master password and recovery phrase, encrypted off-site backups, and a GPU-powered agent that operates via Telegram, with hardware requirements starting at a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8 GB RAM for the HomeCloud variant.", "body_md": "**Your private local cloud, agent wired into everything.**\n\nNextcloud, Home Assistant, Vaultwarden, and a local AI agent are four products. HomeBrain is the appliance that makes them one: a single password, a backup that restores the whole box, updates that will not brick you, and — on a GPU — an agent that operates it so you never need a shell.\n\nNo subscriptions. No cloud accounts. No one else's servers.\n\nA browser wizard configures it. Nothing leaves the box.\n\nSolarized Light, with a dark theme a click away. The dashboard loads nothing from the internet — no CDN, no web fonts, no analytics — so it renders identically on a box with the WAN unplugged.\n\nA GPU runs the agent. Without one, the same install is **HomeCloud**: files, home, vault. ARM or x86_64.\n\n**One secret, one recovery**— dashboard, files, smart home, and backup encryption share a master password. A recovery phrase, shown once, resets the lot.**An agent that acts**— calendar, lights, files, email. Every token stays on your GPU.** Backup that restores the composition**— not four separate dumps. Scheduled, encrypted, off-site, one click from the dashboard.** It runs itself**— pinned versions, downgrades blocked, a factory reset back to the wizard. Health alerts while the box is up.\n\nOn the LAN, open `http://<server-ip>`\n\n. Nextcloud and Vault also speak HTTPS on local ports.\n\nWith a GPU, Telegram is the daily interface: no VPN, no extra app. Pair it after setup. A public tunnel is optional, if you want the web UIs from outside.\n\nWithout a GPU, a [Pangolin](/oalterg/HomeBrain/blob/main/docs/PANGOLIN.md) tunnel is how you reach the browser from outside.\n\nOne domain in, three subdomains out — no port forwarding and no inbound firewall rule. The same screen moves the box to a Cloudflare Tunnel, or reverts every field to what the device shipped with.\n\nDim the living room. Fetch the latest invoice from Nextcloud. Each integration is one row: connect it, test it, revoke it. The agent talks to every service from there. More than one account per service is fine — two homes, two Nextcloud users, several mailboxes.\n\nBelow the integrations sits the other half: the messenger the agent answers on. Pairing is a code, not a port.\n\nDownload a model, switch to it, delete the ones you are not using. The previous model stays on disk, so switching back is instant. Weights are fetched once, from the dashboard — never at inference time.\n\nA schedule, a drive, and somewhere off-site — the whole backup story is one tab. Archives are encrypted with your master password before they leave the box, so the target never sees your data. WebDAV, SFTP or S3 — or a second HomeBrain, which hands out a dedicated replica account for exactly this.\n\n```\nNextcloud          Docker     Files, calendars, contacts\nHome Assistant     Docker     Smart-home automation\nVaultwarden        Docker     Password manager (Bitwarden-compatible)\nMariaDB            Docker     Nextcloud + Vault database\nPangolin Newt      Docker     Encrypted tunnel            optional\nllama-server       systemd    Local LLM inference         GPU only\nwhisper-server     systemd    Speech-to-text              GPU only\nOpenClaw           systemd    AI agent on Telegram        GPU only\n```\n\nVersions are pinned and updated from the dashboard in one click.\n\n| HomeBrain | HomeCloud | |\n|---|---|---|\n| CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 / Intel i5 or better | Raspberry Pi 5 |\n| RAM | 32 GB | 8 GB |\n| Storage | 512 GB NVMe | SSD |\n| GPU | AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT (16 GB VRAM) | — |\n| OS | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS | Raspberry Pi OS Trixie 64-bit |\n\nInference is Vulkan via Mesa RADV — no ROCm. Throughput and tuning: [BENCHMARKS.md](/oalterg/HomeBrain/blob/main/docs/BENCHMARKS.md).\n\n```\n# Ubuntu 24.04+ / Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit\ncurl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oalterg/HomeBrain/main/install | sudo bash\nsudo /opt/homebrain/scripts/provision.sh\n```\n\nOpen `http://<server-ip>`\n\n, log in, and initialize. Local network is the default. The wizard shows the generated master password and recovery phrase **once**. (Restoring from backup reuses the old master password instead of generating one.)\n\n`provision.sh`\n\nprepares the host and starts the manager. It prints a factory password once if you did not pass `--factory-pass`\n\n; that password opens the wizard and is stored in `factory_config.txt`\n\n(mode 600). On AMD GPU hardware a reboot is recommended so kernel parameters take effect; it is not required to open the wizard.\n\nTunnel credentials at provision time are stored on the box and selected in the wizard — they do not skip it. On an already-set-up box the same command repoints the live tunnel without wiping data. Flags and the Pangolin resource map: [PANGOLIN.md](/oalterg/HomeBrain/blob/main/docs/PANGOLIN.md).\n\n| Doc | What's in it |\n|---|---|\n|\n\n[DISASTER_RECOVERY.md](/oalterg/HomeBrain/blob/main/docs/DISASTER_RECOVERY.md)[PANGOLIN.md](/oalterg/HomeBrain/blob/main/docs/PANGOLIN.md)[ROADMAP.md](/oalterg/HomeBrain/blob/main/docs/ROADMAP.md)[PRODUCT_REVIEW_2026-08.md](/oalterg/HomeBrain/blob/main/docs/plans/PRODUCT_REVIEW_2026-08.md)BSD-3-Clause — see [LICENSE](/oalterg/HomeBrain/blob/main/LICENSE).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hn-homebrain-your-private-local-cloud-agent-wired-into-everything", "canonical_source": "https://github.com/oalterg/HomeBrain", "published_at": "2026-08-16 10:29:02+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-16 11:11:23.772842+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-products", "ai-infrastructure", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["HomeBrain", "Nextcloud", "Home Assistant", "Vaultwarden", "OpenClaw", "Pangolin", "Cloudflare", "oalterg"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hn-homebrain-your-private-local-cloud-agent-wired-into-everything", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hn-homebrain-your-private-local-cloud-agent-wired-into-everything.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hn-homebrain-your-private-local-cloud-agent-wired-into-everything.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hn-homebrain-your-private-local-cloud-agent-wired-into-everything.jsonld"}}