This isn’t always the answer. There are people who need to use macOS because, e.g., they need to build macOS apps. Even simple building tools such as Python’s setuptools or py2app requires you to be on Mac in order to build for Mac.

What are your devices? If you have Apple only, Books already does everything you need, and you need no self-hosting.

AI has been impacting the smart home industry at least since AI-powered face recognition in surveillance cameras. I think another interesting field of application is sentiment analysis, i.e. based on how you feel to automatically adjust room climate, lighting, etc. to “lighten the mood”. Otherwise, the AI inside both vac and mop bots can only improve, I feel they are unimpressive right now.

I feel like this is much more than many people on here are ready to undertake.

Also, homelab is a kinda vague designation, so it stops being one when you say so. I know people who call homelabs their NAS running a couple of containers, so go crazy.