I run my own cluster. So I built the tool I always wished I had.
I'm a solo developer who self-hosts everything on my own Kubernetes cluster. Rigel is the app I created to bridge the gap between a Kubernetes manager with a UI and AI.
I run my own Kubernetes cluster at home.
Rigel is the realization of my use of AI in managing my own Kubernetes cluster that I use across multiple nodes.
Two on-premise nodes and one off-premise server my self-hosted apps and those I have in production that serve actual users.
I started leaning on AI to investigate and diagnose cluster issues.
I actually have very little Kubernetes knowledge and the only reason I use it is because cloud options are expensive. I used Docker for a while, but found I didn't like the way I had to use it. I wanted an orchestrator.
Without AI, I wouldn't be self-hosting my own cluster. Not at all. It's such a complex system (k8s). I know why there are ops teams now.
So I made the help permanent.
The AI was so good that I stopped dreading my cluster and started enjoying it. But I didn't want that help to live in a browser tab I kept switching back to — I wanted it built into the tool itself, always there, right next to the pods and logs.
So I built Rigel: a permanent, AI-assisted Kubernetes manager that sits on my desktop. I'll admit it plainly — without AI in the loop, I couldn't run my own cluster nearly as well as I do now. Rigel is the tool I built for myself, then opened up to everyone.
Before Rigel, it was me, Rancher, K9s, and Claude. I wanted the UI of Rancher with the keystrokes of K9s, but with AI assistance built in a way that made it a frist-class citizen.
What actually changed once I moved it all in-house.
The day I cut over my workloads, the numbers got simpler and the setup got mine.
That's what I stopped paying the day I moved my workloads off a cloud VPS and onto the Kubernetes cluster I already run at home.
Self-host apps easily
I deploy new apps onto my existing cluster in minutes — no extra servers to provision, no new bills to sign off on.
High availability
My production websites and self-hosted apps stay up, with workloads that reschedule themselves when a node blips.
Infrastructure I already own
Everything runs on hardware that's already paid for and humming in my homelab — I'm just using what I have.
Rigel is the tool I built so I could keep running my own infrastructure with confidence. If you self-host too, I hope it does the same for you.