Hacker News

This is AI though man - we need to redefine all phrases, such as “open source” as well.

To me, "self-hosted" means, either I use a rented hardware or I use a purchased hardware.

If the software can be switched to a rented or purchased hardware (I do not want Cloudflare's offering) then it is "self-host-able" IMO.

I think there are open source Cloudflare alternative hosting software.

I would define hosting in the cloud as "self-hosting" because you perform the act of hosting that thing and thus have full control over it.

Yes it's not the same as hosting as your own hardware but I would argue that it accomplishes the same goals. The goal is to get other people out of your data. With a "service" the underlying company has every incentive to look at your data and use that to improve it's service, but when you host something yourself with a provider, it's in that providers best interest to never look at your data.

For me it all comes down to the goals of the people your are doing business with. With Cloudflare at least, their goal is to just upsell me on hosting equipment, they couldn't give a rats ass what I'm hosting on that hardware so long it's not illegal.

Yourself? In your brain?

I think the reality is the goal posts are shifting on owning your own data, and apps. The idea that self-hosted is not on your _own_ hardware is crazy to me.

It is confusing, I agree. IMO we should have "self-running" and "self-hosting". Self-running if I provide the hardware, self-hosting if I manage it. Or swap the term, still not sure but there is a difference between you are the one maintaining it and where does it run.

I agree.

I would describe it as externally hosted yet managed specifically because someone else is most likely, whether they admit to it or not, recording some sort of logs on my service and data and that is a choice that I do not own or, in some cases, have access to.

Where do you draw the line? Some SaaS acceptable? VPS? Bare metal? Or your own server in your own home?

All he had to do was to title it properly: 'An AI agent hosted on Cloudflare's free tier'.

Should be “self managed.”

(You can manage it, the resources, replace the software, etc.)

No, crazy would be owning the router and cables/satellites as well as producing your own power and having a manufacturing plant for hardware capable of running the software.

buy a few shares of NET - you are partial owner now - problem solved :)

honestly the fact that Cloudflare pays for infra instead of you is even more impressive ngl

Yeah completely agree. Jeez someone made something cool.

It’s self hosted as in not by an ai provider. This is obvious.

Sure it’s set up to run on some infrastructure but just tweak it if you want to and stop complaining.

Who said they like hacker culture in 2026?

Here my program with feature A, ok without feature A, but you can add it with 20 min of work.

Are we now adding all possible features to the description just because they can be added by hand or LLM?

And since when is hacker culture about false advertising

Eh, it's the phrasing that's off-putting. Things that can be self hosted usually emphasize that first and top most, with a paid option being mentioned 2nd.

I got my bill reversed after having an AI agent pester them long enough

Not disagreeing because I don’t know anything about this particular situation, but I think if you look at any company’s support discord, you will find that they don’t give a shit because of the sample bias. People whose problems they solved. Don’t end up there.

yeah their billing system truly sucks. One month I was charged exorbitantly for Workers Container usage. There was absolutely zero way to monitor or track your usage until the invoice arrived.

You should put anything like this on a privacy.com card with a monthly limit.

I've read yesterday how someone's DO racked $34k bill, someone's else's $17k.

They're pretty cool indeed, just pretty risky.

While Durable Objects are a different story, data coupled with code brings up awful memories of MacOS FileMaker

I'm not sure I understand why? If you hosted plex on a vps, you'd still call it self-hosted. I don't see why using (a) fargate or (b) lambda or (c) cf workers changes the calculus here?

Unless you use cloudflare tunnel to host it

10k neuron is roughly 0.11 USD for the usage https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricin...

Looks like it's about 4M input tokens or 0.5M output tokens with their cheapest model `@cf/meta/llama-3.2-1b-instruct`

With `@cf/qwen/qwen3.8-27b` it's 240K input tokens and 34,000 output tokens

A fantasy currency like in shitty mobile games to obfuscate the actual amount of money spent.

Sure, but this is a free thing for some to play around with. Nothing literal, reliant or histrionic about it. :)

"Self-managed" seems the better term.

"Hosted" is the term that describes an application running on someone else's hardware. As opposed to "self-hosted" which describes an application running on my own hardware. There's no need to invent new terms, just use the existing ones properly and this will prevent any confusion.

all of the people disagreeing in this thread are evidence to the contrary

Used to be broader. Some people wish to narrow it

A suggestion: write the reader yourself next time you’re launching a product/project. It’s painful to always be reading this Claudeish prose.

This was very easy to set up and play around with.

Giving it the ability to access webpages / do searches would be nice!

It seems like the free 10000 "neurons" would cover light daily usage, like maybe 20-30 minutes of back and forth. I spent 500 in a few minutes of chatting until I realized the tasks I had in mind aren't possible.

How often are you running out of gas, so to speak?

This is a neat implementation, regardless of the argument over how it is hosted! There are a number of other systems along the same general lines, but for me the sticking point is that there is no good implementation equivalent to the Alexa devices scattered around my home (and RV!) that allow me to interact via speech. I'm working on one of those now in my copious spare time. (Yes, there are a bunch of rPi projects. Their rates of errors are unacceptably high.)

This is a neat idea, but I wouldn’t say you aren’t relying on someone else's hosted service. Cloudflare isn’t a public utility quite yet.

So instead of relying on someone's hosted service, this is relying on someone's 4 hosted services?

That’s great! Where do I download cloudflare?

> without paying a monthly subscription or relying on someone else's hosted service.

But you are hosting it on Cloudflare? There is always a cost when running on someone else's platform that advertises itself as 'free-tier' and it can change at any moment.