| :--- | :--- | | ezbookkeeping | Double-entry bookkeeping app. OIDC support wins. | ezbookkeeping | | homepage | The dashboard entrance to everything. | homepage | | immich | A complete alternative to Google Photos. AI search is excellent. | immich | | karakeep | Bookmark & Memo with AI tagging. Has snapshot capability. | karakeep | | komga | Delivery server for self-scanned e-books. Syncs with Kobo. | komga | | mealie | Recipe management. AI imports recipes from URLs. | mealie | | outline | Notion-like Wiki. External memory for knowledge. | outline | | paperless-ngx | Document scanning & management. | paperless-ngx | | vaultwarden | Bitwarden compatible server. Key to password management. | GitHub | | vikunja | High-functionality Todo app. Supports Kanban, Gantt charts. | vikunja |
Operation Dashboard
homepage
This is the dashboard that serves as the entrance to everything. Without this, I would suffer amnesia regarding what services are running.
Just by writing settings in YAML, it automatically pulls Docker and K8s status, which feels great. It looks modern, and just staring at it makes me grin.
A modern, fully static, fast, secure, fully proxied, highly customizable application dashboard with integrations for over 100 services and translations into multiple languages.
Life Support Applications
These are the main weapons for maintaining Quality of Life (QoL).
ezbookkeeping
I introduced this recently. The deciding factor was the arrival of OIDC (OpenID Connect) support. That is all. While many existing OSS bookkeeping apps have UI from the “Win95 era,” this one is modern and has excellent usability from smartphones. The UI design is easy even for accounting amateurs, making the visualization of income and expenditure efficient.
ezBookkeeping is a open source, lightweight, self-hosted personal finance app with a user-friendly interface and powerful bookkeeping features.
immich
The optimal solution for “De-Google Photos.” The smartphone app is very well made, and background photo syncing is smooth. Since it’s self-hosted, there’s no need to fear storage limits (though you can’t escape storage costs). Face recognition and object detection AI also run locally, so it’s safe privacy-wise.
Self-hosted photo and video management solution. Easily back up, organize, and manage your photos on your own server. Immich helps you browse, search and organize your photos and videos with ease, without sacrificing your privacy.
karakeep
A bookmark and memo app. What makes this excellent is that when you throw a URL at it, the integrated AI automatically tags it. The search cost of “Wait, where was that article?” decreases drastically (Note: API key required for AI features). Furthermore, the Snapshot function is god-tier. Internet articles are “fluid” and might disappear anytime, but using this allows for permanent local preservation. This peace of mind is priceless.
Karakeep is the open-source bookmark manager for links, notes, and images. Automatically organize and tag your bookmarks with AI. Self-hostable, with apps for iOS, Android, Chrome, and Firefox.
komga
A digital library. You can distribute self-scanned PDFs and EPUBs via the Web.
I use a Kobo (e-reader), and by using a plugin-like mechanism called kobo-sync, I read books on Komga by syncing them directly to the Kobo.
Note: DRM-protected commercial e-books cannot be handled as-is. This is strictly for managing DRM-free or self-scanned data.
mealie
The answer to the endless question, “What’s for dinner today?” When you paste a recipe site URL, the LLM (Large Language Model) parses and imports it nicely. It also has a menu planning function, and the “Roll the dice to decide the menu” feature really hit home for an indecisive person like me. Whether I have the energy to cook according to the menu after buying the groceries is, however, a separate issue.
A simple, fast, and easy way to create and share recipes.
outline
Wiki and Knowledge Base. It’s like extracting only the “document management function” from Confluence or Notion and speeding it up. Although for personal use, I use it to dump my brain’s memory area into external storage. Technically, it supports real-time collaboration for multiple people, so team development is also possible.
A modern team knowledge base for your internal documentation, product specs, support answers, meeting notes, onboarding, & more…
paperless-ngx
The final weapon to eradicate “paper.” Run invoices and postcards through a scanner and throw them in here. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) runs, enabling full-text search for “Where is that document?” later. However, Japanese OCR accuracy isn’t that high, so manually correcting tags and titles is the trick to “avoid operations.” Whether to discard the original is your own responsibility.
vaultwarden
A lightweight implementation of Bitwarden server functions in Rust. Original Bitwarden eats resources, but this is light enough to run on a Raspberry Pi. Standard Bitwarden clients from browsers and smartphones work as is. Password management is basic security, so by self-hosting this, I achieve “holding my own keys.”
Unofficial Bitwarden compatible server written in Rust, formerly known as bitwarden_rs - dani-garcia/vaultwarden
vikunja
Task management tool. Not as heavy and massive as Jira, but more functional than a simple checklist. You can switch between Kanban, Gantt charts, and list views, and project-based management is also possible. It hits the sweet spot for “personal task management” perfectly.
Vikunja is open-source task management you can self-host. Lists, Kanban, Gantt, and more — on your server or ours. Made and hosted in the EU.
Infrastructure & Utilities
From here, these are the backstage staff that “don’t see the light of day.”
- PowerDNS: In-home DNS. Departure from the life of typing raw IP addresses (
192.168.x.x). I was liberated from the toil of rewriting/etc/hostson every terminal. - PowerDNS-Admin: Manage DNS records from a Web UI. GUI is justice.
- Netbird: Mesh VPN. A tunnel to access the home server from external cafes. There are others like Tailscale, but I chose this.
- Gitea: Lightweight Git server. Hosts build definitions for home-use Docker images. To run CI/CD equivalent to Github Actions, you need to build your own Runner, but that’s part of the fun.
- Authentik: Authentication Infrastructure (IdP). The gatekeeper standing before all apps. Apps supporting OIDC link directly, and non-supported apps act via proxy authentication on the Ingress side, achieving Single Sign-On.
System Architecture
Finally, here is a rough diagram of the current configuration. External access goes through Netbird, and only traffic authenticated by Authentik reaches each application.
That concludes the introduction of the residents of my home server. Maintaining these takes effort, but that is part of the “HomeLab.” I hope something here serves as a reference (or a bad example) for your introduction.
