// home server, built for family life

I was manually copying photos off my phone.
Like cavemen did, you know.

20 years of automating things for businesses as a software engineer.

Then I bought a used Mac Studio by accident. Started running services.

famstack is my answer. Photos, documents, family memories, local AI, automated backups. Running on a Mac in our home. Private. No subscriptions. Nothing leaves the house.

We record voice messages from our kids as a kind of diary. I wish I had started six years earlier.

Get notified Join the journey
Terminal — famstack
~ git clone famstack.dev
~/famstack ./setup.sh
  ✓ Caddy · Immich · Paperless · Matrix · Ollama
All 8 services running. Time for a coffee.

Your family life, captured
and working for you.

🏠
Kit — Document Filing
● online
📄 Digitize your paperwork
💬 Ask anything
🎙️ Capture family memories forever soon

This runs on a Mac in our house. Because tech should serve families too.

Read the full story →
// follow the journey

Wanted a Jarvis.

Got a brain-amputated butler. Still briefs my family every morning and hasn't lost a single document. Real stories of excitement and pain building useful tech for our family.

Origin story

The €900 NAS I Never Built

A 15-year-old Synology, a phone that was always full, and the lucky hesitation that saved me from building the wrong server.

Read →
The hardware

I Bought a Used Mac Studio to Run Local LLMs

How a LinkedIn post, a Gemini chat, and an impulse buy led to the machine that started famstack.

Read →
// guides

What we learned, distilled.

Step-by-step guides from things we actually set up and run. No theory.

Guide

Prepare Your Mac as a Home Server

Hardware, settings, backups, networking. Everything before your first service.

Read guide →
Guide

Self-Hosted Photos with Immich

Replace Google Photos. Face recognition, family sharing, all on your own hardware.

Read guide →
Guide

Run Local AI with Ollama

Install Ollama, pick a model, have your first private AI conversation. No cloud.

Read guide →
// how it works

One Mac. Everything connected.

Your phone sends a message, Matrix routes it to your Mac, and nothing leaves your home.

Your Mac · Your Stack
via Matrix
📷
Photos
Immich
💬
Chat
Matrix
🤖
AI
Local LLM
📄
Documents
Paperless
🔒
Backups
Local
🗂️
Code
Forgejo
📱
Your Phone
remote control
Everything runs locally. Nothing leaves your home.

I'm making this reusable for you.

Get notified when the repo goes online. One mail. Promise.