GoKawiiltl;dr: It worked! From one prompt it created a repo, wrote the application and tests, got CI green, provisioned Postgres and deployed the finished app behind HTTPS without another message from me.If you just wanna see the outcome you can find a demo video at the bottom
LLMs got fun again! Maybe they always were and I was just stuck in the trough of disillusionment. Lately, whenever I need a little tool, I just build it.
I was in the gym the other day and wanted a weights tracker. The app I had in mind was about as CRUD-y as it gets, but all the app store versions wanted £12 per month, so I just one-shotted one with Claude. Great fun, but giving an LLM root access to my machine in auto mode still doesn’t sit right with me.
So, the challenge: how can I create a fully remote agentic development environment where we structurally contain the LLM rather than just trusting it? I want to give it an instruction and have it autonomously move through the whole SDLC:
Researching the right stack and packages to use.
Planning and writing the code and tests.
Committing to Git, building and running a CI pipeline.
Deploying the work to a ‘production’ server with databases, o11y, and a domain with SSL.
All on my home server, without another cloud infrastructure bill. The only ongoing cost specific to this experiment is a £20 Codex sub.
The Server(s)
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