How We Govern 22 AI Agents on a $12/Month VPS

The Problem We run 22 autonomous AI processes on a single $12/month VPS. Twelve AI family members - each with distinct roles, from email outreach to job applications to coaching to translation - operating 24/7 with minimal human oversight. It broke constantly. Not because the LLM was dumb. Because it was too helpful: It "improved" a working proxy config and brought down 5 services It spent 20 messages debugging a typo instead of dispatching a background agent It timed out mid-task with zero record of what it was doing It edited protected files because it rationalized "it's just a small fix" It drifted from the actual problem into architecture redesigns nobody asked for System prompts didn't fix it. We tried. The LLM would agree to every rule, then violate them within 3 messages. Why System Prompts Don't Work Here is what 56 logged violations taught us: promises are not enforcement . 2026-02-28T19:13:15+00:00 BLOCKED attempt to modify UNTOUCHABLE: /root/simple-proxy.js 2026-02-28T19:13: