Building AI Agents - Bringing the Production VPS Online with Hermes Episode #8 Part 1

In Episode 8, Hermes starts helping us move from staging toward a real production infrastructure setup for BuildWithPXL. Up to this point, most of the work has been happening inside our staging environment. Now we begin setting up the main production VPS and making sure Atlas/Hermes can safely connect, operate, and help build inside the production stack. The goal is not just to spin up another server. The goal is to make the production VPS match our staging environment as closely as possible, so the same architecture can move from testing to real deployment without breaking. In this episode, we work through: setting up the main production VPS preparing SSH access for Atlas/Hermes creating and adding the SSH key needed for agent access verifying that Hermes can connect to the production server comparing production VPS setup against the staging VPS checking folders, repos, services, scripts, and environment structure problem-solving missing variables, secrets, and config differences making sure the production setup has the same foundation as staging reviewing how Hermes can help operate the VPS safely preparing the production environment for the full BuildWithPXL stack This is an important step because production infrastructure needs to be predictable. If staging and production are too different, every deploy becomes a guessing game. By the end of the episode, we are close to finalizing our AI Agent Infrastructure, This is where the tutorial series starts moving from prototype to production. Chapters 00:00 - Intro 02:03 - Atlas overview 8:36 - Preparing Atlas and us 13:50 - Atlas first pass main VPS 14:55 - Github rulesets and pull releases 22:05 - Setup initial main cloudflare worker 26:04 - Thought on security and what to give an AI agent 29:52 - Main worker variables and secrets 32:26 - Setting up redirects in google console and supabase 34:48 - Wrangler setup 36:47 - Transferring n8n workflow 39:06 - Deploy settings 42:06 - Site is LIVE! 43:48 - Leads Agent errors 46:35 - N8N possible fix 49:44 - Leads Agent debugging 50:32 - Context compaction overview 51:41 - Custom kanban info 53:17 - Secure audit thoughts 54:19 - Outro