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Show HN: I put an AI agent on a $7/month VPS with IRC as its transport layer

Show HN: I put an AI agent on a $7/month VPS with IRC as its transport layer

j0rg3

Comments (51)

  • greesil
    How do you keep it from getting prompt injected?Oh I get it the runtimes are nice and small, you're using Claude for the intelligence. Obv
  • InitialPhase55
    Curious, how did you settle on Haiku/Sonnet? Because there are much cheaper models on OpenRouter that probably perform comparatively...Consider Haiku 4.5: $1/M input tokens | $5/M output tokens vs MiniMax M2.7: $0.30/M input tokens | $1.20/M output tokens vs Kimi K2.5: $0.45/M input tokens | $2.20/M output tokensI haven't tried so I can't say for sure, but from personal experience, I think M2.7 and K2.5 can match Haiku and probably exceed it on most tasks, for much cheaper.
  • getverdict
    Interesting choice of IRC as the transport layer — it's simple, battle-tested, and keeps the attack surface small compared to running a web-facing API.One thing I'd be curious about: how are you handling credential isolation? With the LiteLLM supply chain attack this week, the risk of AI agent processes having access to host-level credentials (SSH keys, cloud tokens, kubeconfig) is very visible right now. A $7 VPS is actually a nice security boundary in one sense — limited blast radius compared to an agent running on a dev machine with access to everything.Would be worth documenting the threat model. Self-hosted AI agents on cheap VPS instances might turn out to be more defensible than agents running inside expensive cloud platforms with broad IAM permissions.
  • faangguyindia
    I actually use IRC in my coding agentChange into rooms to get into different prompts.using it as remote to change any project, continue from anywhere.
  • czhu12
    Super random but I had a similar idea for a bot like this that I vibe coded while on a train from Tokyo to Osakahttps://web-support-claw.oncanine.run/Basically reads your GitHub repo to have an intercom like bot on your website. Answer questions to visitors so you don’t have to write knowledge bases.
  • oceliker
    For future reference I recommend having another Haiku instance monitor the chat and check if people are up to some shenanigans. You can use ntfy to send yourself an alert. The chat is completely off the rails right now...
  • ruptwelve
    While I am a huge fan of IRC, wouldn't be simpler to simulate IRC, since you are embedding it? Or is the chatroom the actual point? Kudos on the project!
  • 0xbadcafebee
    This is such a great idea. I have an idea now for a bot that might help make tech hiring less horrible. It would interview a candidate to find out more about them personally/professionally. Then it would go out and find job listings, and rate them based on candidate's choices. Then it could apply to jobs, and send a link to the candidate's profile in the job application, which a company could process with the same bot. In this way, both company and candidate could select for each other based on their personal and professional preferences and criteria. This could be entirely self-hosted open-source on both sides. It's entirely opt-in from the candidate side, but I think everyone would opt-in, because you want the company to have better signal about you than just a resume (I think resumes are a horrible way to find candidates).
  • anoojb
    I wonder if this brings back demand for IRC clients on mobile devices? ;-)
  • jaboostin
    lol I sent this link to my Claude bot connected to my Discord server and it started converting with nully and another bot named clawdia. moltbook all over again. I’m surprised how effortlessly it connected to IRC and started talking.
  • topaz0
    Curious, which API key are you using?
  • sbinnee
    Nice. I had some fun. Good work!One question. Sonnet for tool use? I am just guessing here that you may have a lot of MCPs to call and for that Sonnet is more reliable. How many MCPs are you running and what kinds?
  • messh
    Can be significantly cheaper on a vm that wakes up only when yhe agebt works, see for e.g. https://shellbox.dev
  • tc1989tc
    it's great project
  • chatmasta
    > That boundary is deliberate: the public box has no access to private data.Challenge accepted? It’d be fun to put this to the test by putting a CTF flag on the private box at a location nully isn’t supposed to be able to access. If someone sends you the flag, you owe them 50 bucks :)
  • agnishom
    > The model can't tell you anything the resume doesn't already say.Good observation. But I would worry that in the scenario when this setup is the most successful, you have built a public facing bot that allows people to dox you.
  • consumer451
    The demo seems to be in a messed up state at the moment. Maybe it's just getting hammered and too far behind?
  • mememememememo
    Yeah that chat got hosed by HN as any Show HN $communicationchannel does
  • ekianjo
    But relying on a Claude API so you don't really "own the stack" as claimed in the article...
  • heyitsaamir
    Great idea and great write up!
  • slopinthebag
    I can tell it's vibe coded because it takes about 1 minute for a message to appear.
  • eric_khun
    that's so fun ! how do you know when to call haiku or sonnet?
  • iLoveOncall
    The model used is a Claude model, not self-hosted, so I'm not sure why the infrastructure is at all relevant here, except as click bait?
  • m00dy
    Did you give your email access to a AI provider ?
  • jgrizou
    Works very well
  • anon
    undefined
  • agentpiravi
    [dead]
  • johnwhitman
    [dead]
  • craxyfrog
    [dead]
  • sayYayToLife
    [dead]
  • felixagentai
    [flagged]