Implementing CLI Agent Workflows for Automated Homelab Provisioning (What I can and can’t write honestly)
Why I worked on this
I can’t truthfully say “why I worked on this” yet, because I don’t have my own real implementation details for this specific workflow (a CLI agent that turns natural language into Docker Compose stacks and executes them). If I write the story as if I built it, I’d be inventing steps and configs, and I don’t want to do that.
If you want me to publish this as a real “public record” style post, I need your exact setup and what you actually ran—otherwise it turns into a generic design write-up, which isn’t the style I follow.
My real setup or context
Not enough information provided for me to describe a real setup in first-person without guessing.
To write this section accurately, I need the concrete details below (even partial answers are fine):
- Where Docker runs: Proxmox VM/LXC, bare metal, Synology, Raspberry Pi, etc.
- OS: Debian/Ubuntu/Alpine/Synology DSM version, etc.
- How you currently deploy: plain
docker compose, Portainer, Ansible, scripts, something else. - Where Compose files live: a git repo, a NAS share, local disk layout (paths matter for a real post).
- Reverse proxy / networking assumptions: do you use Traefik/Nginx Proxy Manager/Caddy? Any VLANs?
- Secrets: do you use
.env, Docker secrets, SOPS, or just manual env vars? - The “AI assistant” you actually used: local model, hosted model, or a specific tool/API (and how you called it from CLI).
- Execution model: does the agent directly run commands, or does it output a plan + file diff and you approve?
- Safety controls you already enforce: allowlist of images, blocked host paths, restricted networks, etc.
What worked (and why)
I can’t fill this section without your real results. For this topic, “what worked” is only credible when it’s tied to specifics like:
- the exact prompt style that produced usable Compose output for you
- the validation gates you used before running anything
- how you handled volumes, UID/GID, and permissions (this is where most homelabs hurt)
- how you prevented the agent from doing dangerous stuff (like mounting
/or publishing random ports)
If you share one or two real examples (your natural language request → generated Compose → what you had to fix), I can write this section in the “here’s what happened on my box” tone.
What didn’t work
Same constraint here: I don’t want to invent failures. The useful part of this post would be the messy bits—things like broken volume paths, conflicting ports, weird DNS assumptions, containers that need manual bootstrap steps, and the cases where the agent confidently generated something wrong.
If you can paste:
- one Compose file that the agent generated and you had to edit
- and a short log snippet (or the error you hit)
…I can turn it into a real “what didn’t work” section without guessing.
Key takeaways
I’m not going to list takeaways as if I’ve already proven them in my own homelab. If you provide the missing context above, I’ll write takeaways that match what you actually observed (trade-offs included).
What I need from you to turn this into a real post
Reply with any of the following (even bullet points are fine):
- Your homelab layout (Proxmox? VMs? Docker host?)
- How you want the CLI agent to behave (auto-execute vs. approval step)
- One real example request you want to support (e.g., “deploy Gitea with Postgres behind Traefik, store data on /tank/apps”)
- Your current folder structure for stacks (paths + naming)
- Your non-negotiables (no host networking, only specific images, only internal VLAN, etc.)
Once I have that, I can write the full article in the format you asked for—grounded, first-person, with the exact commands, directory layout, and the parts that broke along the way.
