Blundersurfer

IT Ops because I'm lazy

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview.

I have a problem. My project list is far too long. I have a ton of tools I want to deploy, capabilities to expand into and dependencies for my lab. All of this would be fine, but I’m short on time, and picky about my lab. So what’s the answer for me? Lower the energy needed to stand up and maintain services in my lab. Luckily I’ve got a new Proxmox host and an AI agent. So enter servermonkey. This is my attempt to be comfortable letting my AI agent make changes to my environment.

What do I want to do?

Prevent the Agent from doing anything dangerous enough to bother me
Limit the scope of issues of it does go sideways
The agent needs enough permissions to do useful things
The solution should be a building block. The goal isn’t to deploy stuff, it’s do do stuff with the deployed stuff.

So what did I do?

Give access tokens to my AI Agent
Limit the access tokens to create, configure and start, but not stop or destroy resources. This limits the amount of cleanup I have to do.
Persistent durable data is stored on my NAS through a SMB share so I don’t need to worry about the container volume being destroyed
When in doubt or if access is limited the AI gives me the commands to run to perform an action. Ex: If my agent can’t ssh into a container I have to install ssh, configure the service and add the key first. This is usually a set of pct commands that take a minute or two to run. It’s annoying, but just annoying enough for me to read the bash scripts.
The containers are only available locally. Network segmentation via VLAN, ID’s and meta data that indicate it an AI container, and a planning process to choose secure, widely used applications all limit the attack surface of the resource.

The goal here is to move quicker with less hassle. If it’s important enough for me to worry about it I should plan the deployment better.

Criticisms

“But isn’t this automating deploying a template and syncing from a repo?” Yes yes it is, when it works well. When there are issues telling the robot to ‘go fix it’ takes the cognitive load off of creating tech debt for myself
“It sounds like you don’t care about the services you’re installing.” Yep, the services are disposable and serve to solve a problem I have as quickly and as friction less as possible.

About

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hi, I’m Blundersurfer.

This site is where I put things worth writing down — blog posts, project notes, and longer-form documentation of work I want to remember.

Elsewhere

GitHub: @blundersurfer
Bluesky: @blundersurfer
Reddit: u/blundersurfer
RSS

Colophon

Hugo + PaperMod, deployed to Cloudflare Pages, sources on Forgejo.

Git

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Everyday

git status -sb                  # short status with branch info
git log --oneline --graph -20   # compact graph
git diff --staged               # what's about to be committed
git add -p                      # interactively stage hunks
git commit --amend --no-edit    # fix the last commit's files, keep the message

Undoing

git restore <file>              # discard unstaged changes
git restore --staged <file>     # unstage without losing edits
git reset --soft HEAD~1         # uncommit last commit, keep changes staged
git reflog                      # find a commit you thought you lost

Branches

git switch -c feature/x         # create + switch
git switch -                    # jump back to previous branch
git branch -vv                  # see tracking branches
git push -u origin feature/x    # push + set upstream

Submodules

git clone --recurse-submodules <url>
git submodule update --init --recursive   # after a plain clone
git pull --recurse-submodules             # update parent + submodules

Rewriting

git rebase -i HEAD~5            # squash, reorder, edit last 5 commits
git commit --fixup <sha>        # mark a commit for autosquash
git rebase -i --autosquash HEAD~10

Remotes

git remote -v                   # list remotes
git remote set-url origin <url> # swap remote
git fetch --all --prune         # tidy up deleted remote branches

Hello World

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first post on Blundersurfer. If you can read this, Hugo built the site and Cloudflare Pages served it.

Nothing interesting here yet — the real writing starts next.

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Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

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