I Self-Hosted an AI Assistant: Lessons from 48 Hours of Debugging I wanted a local AI assistant. Expected: 2 hours. Reality: 2 days of edge cases, broken dependencies, and discovering that "local" doesn't mean "free." The Stack OpenClaw (open-source AI assistant framework) VPS with limited console access (had to file tickets to enable) OpenRouter for model access Local Qwen as fallback What Broke 1. Dependency Hell Pre-installed OpenClaw came with an outdated library. Updated manually. Then updated again. OpenRouter integration only worked after the second update. 2. Certificate Issues Self-hosted means self-managed certificates. Let's Encrypt, reverse proxy, CORS headers. Each layer adds a new failure mode. 3. "Free" API Credits Aren't OpenRouter's "free" models have limits. Hit them within hours. The API key died silently — no error message, just empty responses. 4. Local Model Reality Check Qwen promised tool-use support.…