This is surprising to me and the exact opposite of what I want for a few reasons:

1. I don't like surprise breakages. I am not prepared to fix a service my family uses midday on a Tuesday when I am working since it auto updated. I'd like to specifically make sure I have dedicated time and plan if something is going to go wrong.

2. My family HATES when things change. I try to run LTS versions of things, but annoyingly, some software like nextcloud doesn't have LTS version. One of the things my family likes the most, is that the stuff I host isn't constantly changing like commercial products. Having google photos change or netflix have a new interface randomly is very, very frustrating for them.

Since my homelab is completely internal, I avoid quickly doing updates (unless it is a critical security issue), and definitely avoid doing major version upgrades unless there is good value in it.

By "maintaining itself" I'm sure the OP means it maintains itself in response to their commands. So nothing changes unexpectedly, or against the user's will. Any changes that prove inconvenient or problematic are fixable.

I should probably RTFA before assuming that, but that's the way my Linux box works. When something breaks or needs upgrading, I just tell the agent to deal with it. Normally that's Claude Code, but the role will be assumed by a local model soon enough.

I’m the same way. Mine needs minimal maintenance, because I don’t do much do it. I update my container when I’m bored or something breaks because an auto-updated client is no longer compatible with the server version I’m running (which has happened one time). If there is a critical vulnerability, I’ll usually get an email about it, which has also only happened one time, and I did an update.

Plex is the main app I run that gets used day to day, and they haven’t pushed a meaningful update in years. It’s always some nonsense to try and be a streaming service or social network, which I don’t want.