10 things I wish my homelabs will do for me in 2026

As we're nearing end of year, I've been having time to think about what I wish my homelab would do for me, in a "best case scenario" type of situation.

Things I am looking to do with my homelab (ideally in containers) in 2026 and beyond:

1- search / monitor a topic continuously

I'd like to setup some kind of passive monitoring of the internet for specific keywords. Maybe I want to search my own name in case I get famous (or infamous!), maybe I want to see when certain unpredictable-yet-likely events happen, etc.

2- water my plants / monitor plant health

I'd like to hook-up my plants with an automated watering system. Ideally, I'd probe for soil water level and start/stop a sub-surface irrigation system. I have knowledge of the physical part of this problem, but I lack abilities on the automation side of things. I know that Home Automation "could" do it, but I'm not really looking to mess around with ESP controllers. Simpler is better.

3- homemade DJ / Radio host

I'd like to setup LLM agents to crawl my musical libraries, assemble playlists based on topics/genre/holidays/etc, create text prompts related to this content (i.e. why artist A relates to artist B for this specific playlist), and play those text prompts in between the songs. Literally: can I build my own music shows, on demand / procedurally generated?

4- "Feels Gud" broadcasting

I've got some aging family, and let's be honest: even if you're young, today's world can be bleak. I'd like to setup a stream that plays continuously "Feels Good" content, a.k.a. peaceful content about birds nesting, zoo/wildlife refuge animals, sunrise / sundown, rivers, etc, that my people can easily access and play in the background (maybe even on a wall-mounted TV/picture frame).

I'd like it if I could broadcast like-minded content from whitelisted sources, and I'd want to display proper attribution of ownership for that content, but I may also want to display my own content (I've noticed the grandparents enjoy watching old christmas tapes, for example).

5- Personal Assistant

I'd like to be able to send messages (maybe through Signal, or whatever else) to a virtual self-hosted PA that can schedule items on my calendar (I'd also be open to a self-hosted calendar / contacts list), remind me of groceries to purchase (i.e. I read a recipe, I tell the PA let's cook this later this week, and it builds the ingredients' list out of my local suppliers for easy 1-click purchase).

6- Deals tracker

I tend to buy most of my stuff when it's discounted. I'll browse, build lists, then wait months/years until the price is right. It would be awesome if this could be automated so that when a deal pops-up on my monitored items, I get notified. I already use things like pcpartspicker, camelcamelcamel, and item-specific trackers, but having this centralized and automated would be the next step.

7- Finances tracker

That one, I feel it's both a low-hanging fruit (because solutions already exist) but also difficult because of the privacy / security implications. I don't know that I've found a good balance of usability vs security, so I'm putting it on the list in case I'm in the dark about a good solution that already exists. I'd want to query multiple financial service providers, then format and output the results in a centralized view. It would be best if I could do things like "merge data series A and B together, then label it C and show it in a graph here".

8- Privacy tracker / "delete me" self-hosted

Similar to item #1, but this time the focus is to be like those online services that contact data brokers on your behalf to have your stuff purged from their commercial databases. Why pay some 3rd party when the process can presumably be automated and self-hosted?

9- Real-time "fake or not" detector

I work in a space where my customers implement Real-Time Guidance & Coaching tools for their agents. I have been thinking: could the same technology be re-used to provide real-time guidance on whether this news article / content is fake or not? Those RT tools run locally, with a persistent connection to a server, so I'd be ok with a similar implementation on my end.

10- self-pen-tester

I'm thinking of a container that works on a schedule to do pen-testing on your own infra, at many levels, to generate a report and action-items based on the most up-to-date security situation. The "fixing the problem" part could be manual or automated.

That's it for now!

Feel free to share your own wishlist here, and maybe someone will read them and get inspired to start a project?

Happy 2026 to all!