Weekly Highlights

AI dominated my news feed this week, mostly due to the sudden appearance of Clawdbot Moltbot OpenClaw, a new open source and self-hosted AI chat bot that has taken the world by storm (seriously – check out its star history on GitHub).

The appeal behind the AI personal assistant is its ability to perform tasks like book travel, make dinner reservations, and pro-actively start conversations from virtually any major chat platform. This, of course, requires a beefy local LLM (or subscription to a major platform like Clawd Claude or OpenAI) while also sharing personal details and credentials to various services – all of which can pose somewhat of a serious risk (I'll still probably spin it up at some point).

In semi-related news, projects leveraging AI for significant development assistance will now be tagged with a unique icon in the newsletter's software update and launch lists starting today (see the Rackula example below). I'm still refining my process for appropriately identifying and tagging projects, so please be patient and feel free to reach out if too many fall through the cracks.

Note: The icons above may not display properly in certain e-mail and RSS clients.

Other notable highlights from the week include:

• Vikunja, a popular task management platform that feels like it's been around forever, finally celebrated its v1.0.0 launch
• BentoPDF, a new-ish and community-favorite PDF toolkit, recently ran into some issues with their Docker Hub account and is encouraging users to migrate to their new GHCR image instead
• FOSDEM 2026, a popular conference for open source software, is happening this weekend (1/31 – 2/1)
• There's a new Devuan-based operating system in town named MOS (Modular Operating System) that looks fairly promising (web interface, monitoring, pool-based storage, and a hub for plugins and containers)
• The Immich team inched one step closer to a full-fledged Google Photos replacement with new support for non-destructive photo editing in their recent v2.5 release
• Someone developed a plugin for streaming Plex music on their Steam Deck (I'll never use it, but it's still great)

Happy selfh.st/ing!

Newswire

Content Spotlight

Meet Vanilla Cookbook, a self-hosted recipe platform. Designed for simplicity, Vanilla Cookbook boasts a vanilla experience for users with a streamlined interface and minimal-click functionality – keeping the complexity of managing and modifying recipes behind the scenes. Features include unit conversions, recipe scaling, LLM assistance, recipe scraping, and various import/export formats.

Vanilla Cookbook can be easily deployed via Docker and doesn't require any secondary containers for functionality.

Links: Source Code

Videos and Podcasts

• Let's Talk About 2026 Plans for DB Tech | DB Tech
• After two years of vibecoding, I’m back to writing by hand | Mo Bitar
• The Ultimate Minimal Server Dashboard: Dash Dot Setup Guide | Servers@Home
• OPNsense 26.1: What You Need to Know Before You Upgrade | Sheridan Computers
• Installing PrivateBin on Unraid | AlienTech42
• Paperless-ngx + Local AI (Optional): Better OCR, Self-Hosted, No Cloud | Techno Tim

Command Line Corner

Use paste to view two files side-by-side from the command line:

$ paste example.txt example2.txt
  self-    self
  host     host
  weekly   weekly

Thanks to following executive sponsors, whose continued support makes this newsletter possible:

• AFFiNE
• Atria
• Databasus
• Postiz
• Servers@Home
• tirreno
• Vigilant

I'm always looking for new and existing self-hosted content to share in Self-Host Weekly. Reach out using the button below if you'd like to have your own content featured or have a suggestion for content types you'd like to see featured in future newsletters.