How I took a Home Assistant install with 421 automations, a few security holes and a lot of polling, put it in Git, and cleaned it up with Claude Code without breaking anything my family relies on.

The Lovelace dashboards on the wall tablets around my house were slow and kept reloading, so Claude and I replaced them with small HTML and JavaScript pages that talk to Home Assistant over one websocket. Here's what they look like and how they work.

Why I moved this blog from a WordPress container to a static Zola site, how the posts got converted straight out of the database, and what broke along the way.

A new version of the mbsync and Dovecot Docker images, now with Solr full-text search for fast IMAP searches.

Running the php-fpm Nextcloud Docker image directly behind Nginx Proxy Manager, without a second nginx container.

Replacing a discontinued Logitech Harmony with a cheap Bluetooth remote, a Python event listener, and Home Assistant automations, with no cloud involved.

Using an always-free Oracle Cloud VM and a WireGuard tunnel to OPNsense to expose self-hosted services publicly without opening ports at home.

Repackaging the mbsync and Dovecot setup from Parts 1 and 2 into a pair of Docker images, configured entirely through environment variables.

Running XMCOSY+ outdoor string lights fully locally with Local Tuya, template lights and Node-RED, keeping colors, scenes and brightness.