Homelabs sprawl fast, and most of the advice online assumes you already know what you're building toward. This guide is organized into three tiers instead of one long list, so you always know what's next and aren't handed clustering or infrastructure-as-code on page one.

Each tier is a legitimate stopping point, not just a waypoint. Plenty of solid homelabs never leave Intermediate, and that's a fine place to be - the guide tries to be honest about when a piece of technology is actually worth the complexity it adds, rather than presenting every upgrade as something you obviously need.