I don't know where to begin. This is a long story, but it all started when I saw that DEV was having a ‘finish-it--up-a-thon’. I was instantly interested, with a particular project in mind. I’ve been working on govend on and off since 2024. It’s something I started in a web developer apprenticeship. When I first ‘launched’ this ‘minimum viable product’ I was so proud of it. Every line of ruby, written by me. - No assistance from AI. The nokogiri web scraper implementation, figured out all on my own. It was ugly and I had issues with dates not saving properly in the database with the scrapers. Only recently after deciding I was going to finish my project did I address this. If I am going to ship I refuse to ship slop if it is within my knowledge and power. This is the latest before and after shot I have here:
Figuring Out Requirements
I really gave myself an undertaking. I didn’t realize how much work I had left to do. Given other priorities I was sadly not able to participate in the DEV challenge. But it gave me the itch of motivation I probably needed. The biggest part of this challenge for me was to successfully self-host my app locally. I’m using AI and I did not have a personal 'server' on my local network. I had everything running off other services… render, neon, vercel, heroku, github pages.
I quickly realized that I had a problem when I wanted to use AI in my apps and allow users to use the AI. One of the issues I ran into is that AI cloud servers are expensive. Another issue I ran into is connecting cloud services to a local agent. In my govend app, I created a chat interface a while back where users can talk to ollama and ask about events during certain dates, or to find events by location. This was easy to do locally, I had ollama reach out to algolia with the users request, and bring back related events. But I want to do this… not on my personal computer.
I must admit all of this is a scary leap for me, but a necessary one. I looked into methods of affordable self-hosting and after some digging, I was convinced that the Jetson Orin Nano was the answer. It’s designed to handle AI tasks on small models. Good enough for my use case. And I was really liking how it was a one-and-done situation, no need to buy external little this-and-thats. I’m already doing a big new undertaking, don’t wanna complicate it. I’m not gonna spend $100 or whatever it is now a month on a cloud ai server - I’ll spend a few hundred and be done. (For now, evil laugh)
What I actually got:
- Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit
- Pack of USBs
- nvme hard drive
- After seeing some posts online and speaking to some people, I steered clear of even bothering with an SD card. I’d have to recommend you do the same if you go this route. I have zero regrets.
- They have some good documentation online for setup, and it’s pretty straightforward when all the stars are aligned. But let me tell you how they weren’t.
- So, depending on the current configuration of your nano, it will likely need updates at boot. The updates must be allowed to run for compatibility reasons. No problem. However, the screen I was using for setup was something the cat dragged in...
- If my monitor is already on and then I plug in the nano, the screen goes into sleep mode and hibernates, within 1 second of me plugging it in. It goes to sleep while the nano is still booting.
- By the time I press the button on the screen to wake it back up, the nano has already passed a crucial input moment, so I never saw it!
- The only reason I found this to be the case was because I started reading through troubleshooting with a fine tooth comb. I figured out I was waiting for an input screen I was never going to see because of timing. And yes I did look into the monitor settings, no hope there.
- I took the feedback of hermes and fed it to claude to quickly implement solutions like rate limiting and endpoint security. On too many attempts, the account will lock for a timed period. I discovered so many security vulnerabilities quite frankly I'm embarrassed to admit. The part that is not so embarrassing is that I was intelligent enough to check myself before sharing.
- The app I really wanted to highlight here was govend, but honestly, I’m kind of gushing over my “server hub page” I created as a result of all this. I have been making little ‘profile’ apps here and there throughout time, each one better than the last. I decided instead of a profile page per say, I wanted a central hub to find all things related to me, the developer. Not a resume or profile. Just a ‘hub’. My microserver. Welcome, and thanks for looking. I built this.
- AI helped me implement and identify baseline protections, and I treated security review as essential. I learned about including a security.txt file for bug reporting. A fellow member has a nice article about security.txt: security.txt article
- I added rate limiting, progressive lockouts, and CAPTCHA hooks.
- Added Security headers
- Added Content Security Policy, Removed the unsafe-inline and unsafe-eval directives from script-src, and removed architecture leaks.
- Responsible disclosure - Created /.well-known/security.txt with contact email
- I configured the server firewall. Initially, I was having issues getting it to work, and then I discovered that there was a table compatibility issue I needed to address. Addressing security alone was added another day or two.
Tips
Drama Begins
So that little piece of information that pops up and says ‘enter yes to continue’, I never saw that during my first attempt. I kept retrying over and over, never seeing the screen I needed to see.
I’ll tell you why:
At some point, I finally got the thing to boot by plugging in the orin nano and pressing the button on the monitor at the exact same time. Things started loading, packages zipping across the screen, general excitement. And then, I waited. For like, half an hour. Is it broken? What is happening? General panic.
After what seemed to be rough 45 minutes to an hour, I pulled the plug. Something didn’t seem right. I carefully plugged in the nano and pressed the monitor power button at the same time. It booted, and asked me for a login. Login? What login? I haven’t made a login? That usb became read-only afterward, so I couldn't reformat it normally. I ended up using a different usb for the installer.
Now armed with the knowledge of the scope of my personal problems, I create a new usb, ready to battle with peripherals. It works correctly when you both know what your problems are and how to handle them.
Learning Self-Hosting
In the days (weeks?) that followed, I got everything setup. I learned how to self host my own apps on the nano. Having cleared out all of my heroku’s and render’s I had a small pool of domain names at my disposal as well. I spent a few days really trying to get govend to a proper state so I could share my app and help vendors and artists find events to vend at and manage their events in one place. As a vendor of 5 years I know this is needed. Small businesses are the wild west and don’t have too many specialized tools. I really wanted to see it come alive. I could spend forever on it, but I have to make it available at some point.
1 Ollama for 2 apps
I also cleaned up my flippy card app that uses ollama for the generation of flashcards, a memory game, and self quizzes. I am able to use a single ollama instance for both of my apps. How awesome is that? And basically, since my database is separated from supporting services, my web server is basically just a little connecting hub for apps and services. Pretty cool! I think its relevant to insert here that AI can be a security nightmare if you don't button stuff up.
Learning Security
I learned about securing things, using proxies, and closing unused ports. I asked a couple trusted people to take a peek at my app and I had someone run a scan on it before sharing with their bot as a security measure. I openly admit I had not considered the ai security too heavily, and things were found and addressed. It’s interesting to be fairly confident about an app and then AI throws a wrench into everything. I did not anticipate all the time that has to be spent on security. Massive learning experience, and had me groaning at my server towards the end.
Fast Build from Experience
I installed claude code and used it to help me build out a server ‘hub’ page quickly, where I share some live apps, blog posts, and relevant links. After a carefully chosen prompt it built quickly with my aesthetic in mind. I proceeded to tweak it, adding a carousel to the projects section on top so it would look different from the bottom blog section. I pulled in code I used in previous projects to let Claude know what I was trying to do. Having built a bunch of stuff prior, it made constructing this page incredibly simple.
Security
I would have to say a large part of cleanup involved making sure everything is secure as possible.
Here is a breakdown:
What do you think?
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