Home-Office Automation & AI Hub¶

A comprehensive operating manual for a privacy-first, AI-powered home lab and family automation stack.

🚀 Start Here¶

New to the stack? Read the Maturity Ladder to understand the stages of implementation.
Want to automate emails to calendar? Follow the Email to Calendar Playbook.
Need to digitize mail? See the Scan to Task Playbook.
How do agents communicate? Read about MCP & ACP.
Understand the big picture? View the Component Map and Automation Flows.

Level	Description	Core Tools
Level 1: Manual	Digital storage and basic sync.	Nextcloud, Syncthing
Level 2: Organized	Centralized documents and visual orchestration.	Paperless-ngx, n8n
Level 3: Augmented	AI-assisted extraction, semantic search, and benchmarking.	Paperless-AI, Ollama, HLE
Level 4: Autonomous	Agent-led refactoring, proactive task management, and performance optimization.	Jules, OpenHands, Terminal-Bench

Requirement	Preferred Tools	Why?
100% Self-Hosted	Radicale, Vikunja, Ollama	No external API dependencies.
Highest Accuracy	ChatGPT, Google Calendar	State-of-the-art models and reliable SaaS.
Developer Focus	Zed, Cursor, Aider, Junie CLI	High-performance editors and terminal agents.
Low Resource	Homebox, Syncthing	Efficient, specialized tools.

Operational Playbooks - Step-by-step guides for common workflows.
Reference Implementations - Workflow exports, prompt templates, and config standards.
Tool Catalogue - Detailed documentation for 90+ tools.
Architecture - High-level component maps and data flows.
Knowledge Base - Deep dives into AI models and agent protocols.
Standards & Conventions - Naming and data contract specifications.
Roadmap - Future improvements and known gaps.

Quickly explore the stack from your terminal:

# List all tools
python3 scripts/compare_agents.py list

# View documentation for a specific tool
python3 scripts/compare_agents.py doc paperless-ngx

Organized for a high-performance, private homelab environment as of 2025.