Homelab Software Stacks: AI Automation, Small Business, and Backup

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What This Article Covers

• Three complete software stacks for your homelab, not individual tools but meaningful combinations.
• Stack 1: AI & Automation (coding, content, workflows).
• Stack 2: Small Business (accounting, organization, invoicing, CRM, support).
• Stack 3: Backup & Security.
• Everything self-hosted, with links to detailed guides.

Introduction

The question “what software goes in my homelab?” is best answered in stacks: tools that work together, not standalone pieces. Here are three proven configurations, all running on a single mini-PC (like the MS-S1 Max from the homelab guide) with Docker.

Stack 1: AI & Automation

The core stack for BotServ readers: local AI plus the tools that power it.

How the stack works together: n8n is the glue. A trigger (email, webhook, cron) calls Ollama, the result goes into NocoDB, Nextcloud, or to your phone via Telegram bot. Coding runs directly in Continue.dev/Aider against Ollama: coding models like qwen2.5-coder or deepseek-coder locally.

# Minimal AI stack, docker-compose.yml (excerpt)
services:
  ollama:
    image: ollama/ollama:latest
    volumes: [ollama_data:/root/.ollama]

  open-webui:
    image: ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main
    environment:
      - OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://ollama:11434
    ports: ["127.0.0.1:3000:8080"]
    depends_on: [ollama]

  n8n:
    image: n8nio/n8n:latest
    ports: ["127.0.0.1:5678:5678"]
    environment:
      - OLLAMA_HOST=http://ollama:11434
    depends_on: [ollama]

volumes:
  ollama_data:

Stack 2: Small Business

For freelancers and small companies: office tools, self-hosted. This is the “no data to Lexoffice/sevDesk” stack.

Typical business workflow:

Cal.com (customer books) 
    → Twenty (deal created) 
    → Ollama (proposal text) 
    → Stirling-PDF (PDF generated) 
    → DocuSeal (signature) 
    → Invoice Ninja (invoice) 
    → Paperless-ngx (archive)

Important notes for Germany:

• GoBD/Taxes: Invoice Ninja helps with numbering and archiving, but GoBD compliance is your responsibility: involve your tax advisor, maintain regular immutable backups.
• Taxes directly: No open-source tool replaces ELSTER/UStVA. Invoice Ninja covers invoicing, not tax filing. For accounting, GnuCash/Akaunting helps as a supplement; tax exports to your advisor remain manual or via export.
• Organization: Paperless-ngx for incoming receipts and documents with OCR and tagging, the most critical piece for “staying organized.”
• GDPR: Everything on-premises, the major advantage of this stack over cloud solutions.

Stack 3: Backup & Security

The foundation. Without backup, your homelab is just a toy.

The 3-2-1 rule in your homelab:

• 3 copies of your data
• 2 different media (e.g. NVMe + external HDD)
• 1 copy off-site (different location, encrypted cloud, or at a friend’s place)

# restic example: daily encrypted backup
restic -r /mnt/backup/repo backup /var/lib/docker/volumes \
    --exclude-file=/etc/restic/excludes

See Backup Basics and Docker Backup.

Setup by Budget

Further Reading

• IRC-Coding.de: Programming tutorials.
• Homelab Guide: The hardware foundation.
• Automation Integrations: All tool articles.
• Local AI: Ollama and friends.
• Chatbots: Bots for your workflows.
• Docker: Deployment basics.
• Backup: Data protection in detail.

Key Takeaways:

• Think of homelab software as stacks: AI/automation, small business, backup.
• AI stack: Ollama + Open WebUI + n8n + coding tools + RAG, n8n is the glue.
• Small business: Invoice Ninja, DocuSeal, Twenty, Paperless-ngx, Chatwoot. Mind GoBD, leave taxes to your advisor.
• Backup stack: restic/borg + 3-2-1 rule + UPS, not optional.
• One mini-PC runs all three stacks; 128 GB only needed for large language models.

FAQ

Sources and Further Reading

• IRC-Coding.de: Programming tutorials.
• BotServ.de: All linked articles on this page.

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