tailscale + telegram dev into my pi-harnessed openclaw agents
my lil' VPS is fun to work with.
i've experienced development in a few different ways: myself (i'm not particularly inclined to it for prolonged periods, hence i am in product management), working "with" swe's to build things, and now... talking to my telegram bot which is an interface into my pi agent harnessed openclaw set up on a $9/mo digital ocean droplet (secured by tailscale).
ok, there is also the claude code max sub of $169/mo. still: $200/mo or so and i have a highly responsive and efficient developer.
i've had multiple iterations of working this way and i now feel this is the ideal. the way i plan to do things is by slowly ascending the ladder of complexity, starting with this basic personal website and a few .md files representing blog posts (and yes i am writing this myself, via tg, to my bot who will push it).
my stack
i want to quickly describe my stack, because i feel it is a nice synthesis of all the different set ups i have seen.
machine: i actually feel more comfortable with a professionally hosted VPS than a mac mini. it is always available and i don't need to worry about the cleaner unplugging it to vacuum (yes, this has happened before). i'm using a basic ubuntu distro.
agent setup: i am using pi agent harness + openclaw + claude code to run all of my token tomfoolery. i'm pretty happy with it so far albeit i haven't given it any difficult work yet.
security: bloat and security are my main concerns and where i initially failed. it is easy to just be lazy and install a bunch of bloat or context-wasteful plugins, etc. so i've done two things:
- tailscale essentially hardens the security. the VPS is on my tailnet, so is my phone and my laptop, so it works everywhere, but also very private + secure.
so i feel this is all very simple and secure.
the vibe shift
i really never enjoyed ide + terminal + localhost + docs perpetually open to get an idea from a thought to something on a domain. now that thought → prod bandwidth must be at least 10x as fast.
from here, i'll probably just add a /tools page and as i suggested earlier, continue to ascend the ladder of complexity of what i can do with my little agent.
written via telegram. pushed by my bot. deployed via railway.