Building in public: a chat assistant that runs your server so you don't have to live in the terminal
Hello everyone,
I'm Igor. I've spent a long while heads-down building Server Manager, and I'm now flipping from building to actually putting it in front of people — so I want to do the rest in public and learn from this crowd.
The problem I kept seeing: loads of people buy a server (Hetzner, Contabo, a DigitalOcean droplet, Oracle's free tier…) to self-host something — WordPress, a database, a small app, Vaultwarden — and then hit a wall. Not the "install the app" wall. The sysadmin wall: SSH, a reverse proxy, HTTPS certs, DNS, firewalls, Docker. Semi-technical folks get stuck there and give up, or overpay for managed hosting.
What I built: you connect your server, then just tell an agent (Faro) what you want — "deploy WordPress and put it on my domain," "back this up," "why is my site down" — and it does the sysadmin part, explaining each step and asking before anything risky.
It's live at https://servermanager.dev if you want to poke around (free to try, no card).
Honest traction: basically pre-traction. A handful of signups, one paying user, a trickle of traffic converting to roughly nobody. I've been so deep in the product I've done ~zero marketing. That changes now — which is exactly why I'm here.
Two bets I'm making:
- Talk to your server, don't configure it. Describe the outcome, not the config — the agent does the sysadmin work.
- You own the box. Not another PaaS you rent — your server, your data, your provider; the app is just the layer that makes it manageable.
I'll post the journey here — what works, what flops, the numbers. Two things I'd love from you:
- If you've self-hosted on a server and hit that wall (or powered through it on purpose), what was the worst part?
- If you've launched a dev-adjacent tool: how did you get your first 100 real users?
Thanks in advance for any feedback and suggestions
The describe outcomes, not configure systems framing is the right instinct, most people who get stuck at the SSH, DNS, cert layer don't want to learn it, they want it done. My question as someone who thinks a lot about how much to trust an agent with real side effects, when Faro is about to do something destructive like a firewall change or a cert swap, does it show you the plan before it runs, or does it just execute and report back? That boundary is usually where semi-technical users get burned, not the initial setup.
i think cold DMs only work after a public interaction, or when they literally asked for help. otherwise it gets the ick fast. let the public answer do the work, then leave a low-pressure ‘happy to show what i’d do on a blank VPS’ line. the people who raise their hand are the lead; everyone else just got a useful answer.
Most people don't actually hate self-hosting, they just hate playing part-time sysadmin to fix broken reverse proxies and SSL certificates, so putting a chat layer over raw SSH is a massive lifesaver.
Exactly, and I think the "part-time" is the whole trap. Because you only touch this stuff every few months, you never build fluency — so every time a cert quietly expires or a proxy starts 502ing, you're back to square one, re-reading the same docs you read last time. The work itself usually isn't hard; it's that it's infrequent, a little scary, and sitting right between you and the thing you actually wanted to run. That gap is exactly what I'm trying to close: describe the outcome, skip the re-derivation.
Did you cross over and make peace with the sysadmin side, or are you still in the "why am I doing this again" camp?
The interesting positioning choice is between making server management accessible to non-technical users and making experienced developers faster.
What would convince you that the primary wedge is reducing sysadmin complexity for new self-hosters rather than improving workflows for existing server users?
I love this question, and this idea - it lands right where MCPs get really interesting for me. It serves a space where, "I know what I want to do at a high level, but I lack the low-level expertise to make it happen."
For my two cents though, I'd absolutely use this as a solo founder/developer. Unfortunately, I still have a day job., so my time is limited, and I want to spend it building, not doing sysadmin work. It's not that I can't or don't know how - it's just that it's a chore I'd rather minimize my time/effort on.
Good question, and I'll pick rather than hedge: the primary wedge is reducing sysadmin complexity for people who aren't sysadmins — the same person from my other reply, who bought the box and can build the app but freezes at the reverse proxy.
What convinces me is where the acute pain actually sits. In every thread I've been in, the person about to give up is never the experienced dev shaving time off a workflow — it's the newcomer who hit the wall. "Make experienced devs faster" is a hard wedge because they've already crossed that wall: they've got their own scripts and muscle memory, so a tool saves them a few minutes at most. The newcomer who'd otherwise quit or overpay for managed hosting gets a completely different order of value — crossing a wall they couldn't get over at all. That asymmetry is the whole argument.
What would flip me: if usage data showed the opposite — CLI-comfortable power users running multi-server setups coming back daily while first-timers bounced after one task. That's the falsifiable version. So far everything about the product (the propose-then-confirm approval step, the plain-English explanations, "why is my site down" as a first-class command) is built for the person who doesn't want to become a sysadmin, and that's who leans in.
Experienced users do get value and I'll happily take them, but as an expansion segment, not the wedge. Trying to be the tool for both from day one is how you resonate with neither.
Appreciate the detailed context.
Would be good to continue the conversation as you learn which segment shows the strongest pull.
What's the best email to reach you on?
Yeah, I'd like that. Easiest is probably X — @servermanagerD — or LinkedIn; connect there and you'll catch the updates as I post what the pull data actually shows, segment by segment. If email's easier, [email protected] reaches me directly.
Out of curiosity, what's pulling you toward the positioning angle — are you building in a similar space, or coming at it more from the go-to-market side?
Thanks! I’ve just sent it over.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts whenever you have a chance.
Thanks Aryan, and thanks for the genuinely thoughtful read — you've pegged the core decision exactly. My plan for now is to keep wrestling it in the open and let real usage do the arguing as more people try it, then post the twists here as they come. Appreciate you following along.
Hi Igor,
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
That makes sense. Letting real usage reveal how people naturally understand and use ServerManager is a reasonable next step.
I’ll be interested to see what patterns emerge as more users try it and how the positioning question evolves.
Appreciate you sharing the journey publicly, and I’ll keep following along.
The sysadmin pain point is real - you've nailed the exact moment people give up. For your first 100 users question: dev tool distribution is brutal because you're not selling to individuals, you're selling to people who already bought their solution (managed hosting). Your warm channel is probably existing self-hosters who already have the pain. Communities like r/selfhosted, WireGuard forums, or Hetzner's own forums know exactly who you're building for. Have you tried reaching out directly to people asking about this specific workflow on those platforms?
This is a genuinely useful reframe, thank you — and yes, that's exactly the play I'm running right now: being useful in those threads (r/selfhosted, the VPS subs) with zero pitch, and only mentioning the product when it's literally the answer to a direct "is there a tool for this?". Slow, but the conversations are real, which beats shouting into a launch.
One refinement I'd add to your "selling to people who already bought their solution" point, because it's the thing I keep bumping into: the coldest prospect is someone comfortable on managed hosting — they have no pain. The warmest is the person who deliberately bought a raw VPS (Hetzner, Contabo, Oracle's free tier) precisely because they wanted to own the box, and then hit the sysadmin wall. They've already self-selected for ownership and they're actively stuck — motivation and pain in the same person.
The subtlety with r/selfhosted specifically is that a lot of it skews greybeard — people who conquered that wall years ago and half-enjoy the config. The pain lives one notch down from them: the semi-technical newcomer who can build the app but freezes at "SSH in and edit the Caddyfile." So the community's right, I just have to aim at the person asking the beginner question, not the person answering it.
On the "reach out directly" part — my hesitation there isn't nerve, it's that a cold DM to someone mid-problem tends to read as "I was watching you struggle so I could sell you something," which torches the exact trust that being useful in the open is meant to build. So I've bet on being the most helpful answer in public and letting people come to me. Have you seen direct outreach actually convert without that ick, or does patient-and-public just win on a longer clock?