The agent infrastructure crisis is here. Companies are shipping AI agents that make decisions, move money, and access sensitive data—all while running on someone else's servers with zero auditability.

The Problem

AI agents need infrastructure. But the current default is "use [vendor]'s cloud." That works until: - Your agent makes a decision and you can't audit why - Compliance asks where the data lives - The bill becomes unpredictable - The vendor changes terms

Why Self-Hosting Matters

Auditability. You need logs. Real logs. Not whatever the SaaS decided to show you. When an agent makes a bad call, you need to know exactly what happened.

Sovereignty. Your data, your rules. GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2—all easier when you control the stack.

Cost predictability. Cloud bills scale with usage. Your hardware doesn't.

Performance. Local LLMs, local data, local decisions. No round-trip to someone else's API.

The Stack

What you actually need: - Compute: VPS or bare metal (Hetzner, OVH, or your own rack) - Orchestration: Docker Compose for simplicity, K8s if you must - Proxy/Router: nginx, Caddy, or Traefik - Monitoring: Prometheus + Grafana - Storage: PostgreSQL, Redis, whatever fits

Security Checklist

• [ ] SSH keys only, no passwords
• [ ] Firewall configured (ufw/iptables)
• [ ] Auto-updates enabled
• [ ] Monitoring alerts set up
• [ ] Backups automated and tested
• [ ] SSL/TLS everywhere
• [ ] Rate limiting on endpoints

Getting Started

# Spin up a basic stack

Check logs docker-compose logs -f

Monitor resources htop docker stats ```

The Trade-off

Self-hosting isn't free. You pay with time: setup, maintenance, monitoring. But for production agents, it's the only real option.

You own the uptime. You own the data. You own the mistakes.

That's the deal.