Developer Isolates Self-Hosted AI Agent on Dedicated Network to Prevent Data Exposure

A self-taught developer built a 13-service self-hosted platform on a single Linux VPS, including an autonomous AI agent named Hermes with persistent memory, code execution, and web browsing capabilities. During a security review, the developer discovered the agent shared a Docker network with the rest of the stack, giving it an unintended network path to the database port. Although database credentials were never directly accessible to the agent, the developer applied a least-privilege approach and moved Hermes onto its own isolated Docker network. Only the chat front-end and a private metasearch service were granted access to the agent's network, blocking all other services by default. The developer concluded that hard network boundaries are more reliable than soft in-app approval prompts, which can be bypassed or fall outside the active request path entirely.