I Let OpenClaw Set Up this ZFS NAS and Homelab VM Host

A hands-on experiment where an AI coding agent (OpenClaw/Claude) is given SSH root access to a Beink ME Pro mini PC NAS and tasked with fully configuring it as a homelab node. The AI autonomously set up Proxmox VE, configured ZFS RAID-1 with two 28TB drives, deployed LXC containers, installed Tailscale VPN, Uptime Kuma, and Nginx Proxy Manager — all within a couple of hours using local LLMs (Minimax M2.5, Qwen 3) running on Apple Silicon and AMD hardware. The hardware itself is reviewed: Intel N95 quad-core, 12GB LPDDR5, dual 2.5G/5G Ethernet, three M.2 slots (PCIe Gen 3 only). Key takeaways include the impressive capability of AI agents for sysadmin tasks, the security risks of granting root SSH access, and the implication that homelab setup no longer requires deep IT skills.