Having that feeling that agent upkeep is a hidden layer of work nobody accounts for when setting these up on a VPS. It's easy to say "just deploy it" — the complexity that comes after is the real cost.

Every tool bolted on to unblock a problem becomes its own thing to maintain. SearXNG, Jina, Camofox, VNC, Directus, the VPS itself — suddenly the agent isn't an agent, it's a small platform with a platform's maintenance load. The honest question: is all this worth it for the benefits, apart from the learning (which is genuinely good)?

The trap is that infra work feels productive but doesn't produce content. If upkeep starts eating the time it was supposed to free up, that's the signal to simplify.