DEV Community: SangheeSon

My friend unplugged my Raspberry Pi — so I built a homelab manager

SangheeSon — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 13:47:01 +0000

It started with an accident.
My friend was at my place, tripped over a cable,
and unplugged my Raspberry Pi. The SD card got
corrupted. Network partition gone. Files — gone.
I had to re-flash everything from scratch.
No backup. No remote monitoring. No alerts.
I didn't even know it was down until I tried
to SSH in the next day.
That's when I decided: never again.

The Problem

If you run a homelab, you probably know the drill:

SSH into each server manually
Run docker ps to check containers
Forgot which port Uptime Kuma is on
No idea if your disk is 90% full
Deploying a new app means writing YAML by hand

I had 2 servers (Mac Mini + Raspberry Pi 5).
Managing them was death by a thousand SSH sessions.

What I Built

homebutler
— a single 15MB Go binary that manages
your entire homelab.

# Check all servers at once
homebutler status --all
# Install an app in 30 seconds
homebutler install uptime-kuma
# Container resource usage
homebutler docker stats
# Wake a sleeping machine
homebutler wake nas

No Docker required to run it. No database.
No config files to write (there's an init wizard).
Just download and go.

One-Command App Install

This is the feature I'm most proud of.
Instead of writing docker-compose files:

homebutler install jellyfin --media /mnt/movies

That's it. It:

Checks if Docker is running
Checks if the port is available
Generates docker-compose.yml
Pulls the image and starts the container
Verifies it's running

Currently supports 6 apps: uptime-kuma,
vaultwarden, filebrowser, it-tools, gitea,
and jellyfin.

Built-in AI Integration

homebutler includes a built-in MCP server
with 15 tools. Connect it to Claude, ChatGPT,
or Cursor, and you can manage your homelab
from chat:

"Install uptime-kuma on the raspberry pi"
"What's the CPU usage on all servers?"
"Restart the nginx container"

The AI part is completely optional.
homebutler works perfectly as a standalone CLI.

The Tech

Go — single binary, cross-compiled for Linux/macOS (ARM + x86)
cobra — CLI framework with auto-generated help and shell completion
go:embed — web dashboard baked into the binary
Bubble Tea — terminal TUI dashboard
No frameworks for HTTP — just net/http

The whole thing is 15MB. Zero runtime dependencies.

What's Next

More installable apps (targeting 15+)
Scheduled backups with one-command restore
Server down notifications (Telegram/Discord)
Reverse proxy auto-configuration

Try It

brew install Higangssh/homebutler/homebutler
# or
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Higangssh/homebutler/main/install.sh | sh

Then:

homebutler init    # setup wizard
homebutler status  # see your server

GitHub: https://github.com/Higangssh/homebutler

Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFoDiYRH_nE

What's your homelab stack?
I'd love to know what apps you'd want homebutler to support next.

git log is boring. So I made this instead.

SangheeSon — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:26:49 +0000

Ever watched a movie and thought "damn, those end credits look cool"? Now imagine that — but for your Git contributors.

git log is boring. git shortlog -sn is slightly less boring. But neither of them makes your contributors feel like the stars they are.

I wanted something fun. Something you could run at a team demo or after a big release. Something that makes people go "wait, what is that?"

So I built gitcredits

gitcredits demo

It's a single binary. You run gitcredits in any Git repo, and it rolls your contributors like movie credits — complete with ASCII art titles, starfield background, and smooth scrolling.

How it works

Reads your Git history
Extracts contributors, commit counts, recent features
Renders it all as a terminal animation using Bubble Tea (https://github.com/charmbracelet/bubbletea) + Lip Gloss (https://github.com/charmbracelet/lipgloss)

No config files. No setup. Just run it in any Git repo.

Themes

The default theme gives you Star Wars-style scrolling credits with a starfield.

But my favorite is the Matrix theme — digital rain with a text resolve effect:

matrix theme

What it shows

• Title — your repo name in big ASCII art
• Project Lead — whoever has the most commits
• Starring — all contributors with their commit counts
• Notable Scenes — recent feat/fix commits
• Stats — total commits, contributors, stars, language, license

Why I built it

I've been contributing to open source for a while, and I realized there's no fun way to celebrate the people behind a project. GitHub's contributor graph is nice, but it's just a chart.

I wanted something that felt like a moment. Run it at the end of a sprint. Run it at a hackathon. Run it just because your terminal deserves better.

Check it out

GitHub: (https://github.com/Higangssh/gitcredits)

It's open source, MIT licensed, and contributions are welcome 🎬

I built a single binary to manage all my homelab servers from Telegram

SangheeSon — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 07:29:25 +0000

I run 3 servers at home — a Mac Mini, a Raspberry Pi, and a NAS. Managing them used to mean opening 3 SSH sessions, running the same commands on each, and switching between terminal tabs at 2 AM when something breaks.

I got tired of it. So I built homebutler.

The moment that started it all

3 AM. Phone buzzes. Disk alert on my NAS — 91% full.

Old workflow: grab laptop → SSH into NAS → check what's eating disk → restart the problem service → SSH into the other servers to make sure they're fine → go back to sleep 40 minutes later.

I wanted this instead: pick up phone → read the alert → type "what's eating disk?" → type "restart postgres" → sleep. All from one chat window.

What homebutler does

It's a single Go binary (~13MB, zero dependencies) that does two things:

1. CLI for your terminal

$ homebutler status --all

🖥 mac-mini (darwin/arm64)
   CPU: 23% | Memory: 5.2/8.0 GB | Disk: 37%

🖥 raspberry-pi (linux/arm64)
   CPU: 12% | Memory: 1.6/4.0 GB | Disk: 47%

🖥 nas-box (linux/amd64)
   CPU: 8% | Memory: 12.4/32 GB | Disk: 87% ⚠️

One command, all servers. It connects to remote servers over SSH in parallel.

2. MCP server for AI chat

homebutler speaks MCP, so Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor — anything that supports MCP — can use it as a tool.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "homebutler": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "homebutler@latest"]
    }
  }
}

This is what it looks like in practice:

🚨 Alert: CPU at 92% on nas-box

Me: "What's eating CPU?"

Bot: postgres — 85.2%

Me: "Restart postgres"

Bot: ✅ Done. CPU 92% → 12%

No SSH. No laptop. No dashboard login.

What's inside

System monitoring — CPU, memory, disk, uptime
Docker management — list, restart, stop, view logs
Wake-on-LAN — power on machines from anywhere
Port scanner — see what's listening
Network scan — discover LAN devices
Multi-server SSH — manage all servers from one place
Web dashboard — dark-themed UI, embedded in the binary
Alerts — threshold-based notifications
JSON output — pipe-friendly for scripts and AI

Why a single binary?

I've tried Netdata, Glances, CasaOS. They all need Docker, or a running daemon, or a web server that's always on.

homebutler is different:

Copy one file to your Pi. Done.
No Docker. No Node. No Python. No config server.
Runs when you need it, sleeps when you don't.
Air-gapped install? Just scp the binary.

Multi-server: the part I'm most proud of

# ~/.config/homebutler/config.yaml
servers:
  - name: mac-mini
    local: true
  - name: raspberry-pi
    host: 192.168.1.30
    user: pi
  - name: nas-box
    host: 192.168.1.20
    user: admin

Once configured, every command works across all servers:

homebutler docker list --all    # containers on every server
homebutler alerts --all         # alerts from everywhere
homebutler serve                # web dashboard for all servers

Try it

# Homebrew
brew install Higangssh/tap/homebutler

# npm (for MCP server)
npx -y homebutler@latest

# Go
go install github.com/Higangssh/homebutler@latest

GitHub: github.com/Higangssh/homebutler

It's MIT licensed, open source, and I'm actively maintaining it. If you run a homelab, I'd love to hear what you think.