# PDR 010: Keep agent work available during home outages

- HTML version: https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/homelab/pdrs/010-keep-agent-work-available-during-home-outages
- Project: Home Lab
- Status: Proposed
- Opened: 2026-09-04

## Context

The home development host provides the persistent workflow from PDR 005, but
the Mac mini, router, broadband, and household power form one failure domain.
When that domain is unavailable, the prepared repositories and agent interface
disappear together.

Creating a temporary cloud machine after an outage would begin with setup at
the moment the fallback is needed.

## Proposed decision

Keep one off-site agent environment prepared before a home outage begins. It
must provide the same private, mobile workflow for starting an agent, changing
a repository, and pushing a branch or pull request over a modest mobile
connection.

Use Git branches and pull requests as the handoff boundary between home and
off-site environments. Do not promise live session, database, or worktree
synchronization. Work that exists only in one unpushed worktree is outside the
continuity guarantee until a separate backup protects it.

Keep the fallback single-user and private. The product decision does not
require active-active service or a cluster spanning home and cloud.

## Consequences

A home outage need not stop all agent work. The fallback adds a continuing
provider cost, another credential and recovery boundary, and discipline around
pushing work that needs to move between environments.

## Evaluation

Accept the proposal only after the Mac mini is off, the test device is off home
broadband, and the user can reach the off-site interface over mobile data,
start an agent, change a repository, and push the result.

## Migration note

This PDR extracts the outage-continuity promise and its real success test from
ADR 021. It keeps the original date and Proposed status. ADR 021 retains the
Hetzner, Terraform, NixOS, K3s, storage, access, and recovery architecture.

## Related records

- Project: [Home Lab](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/homelab.md)
- Implemented by ADR: [ADR 021: Cloud remote-development plane](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/homelab/adrs/021-cloud-remote-development-plane.md)

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