Esteban Monge

You Really Want an AI Agent in the Cloud… But You Only Have Five Dollars

Artificial Intelligence agents are often presented as something that requires expensive GPUs, paid subscriptions, and large cloud infrastructures. But what if you only have a small budget, a Debian server, and curiosity?

In this talk, I will show how I built a functional AI agent using mostly open technologies and low-cost services. The project combines Debian Project, Linode infrastructure, OpenRouter APIs, Telegram as the user interface, and Python as the glue connecting everything together.

The session will cover practical lessons learned while deploying and maintaining the bot, including hosting considerations, API costs, open-source AI models, automation, limitations of low-budget environments, and why Debian remains an excellent platform for experimentation and self-hosting.

This is not a corporate “AI strategy” presentation. It is a practical, honest, and accessible look at building useful AI systems with limited resources and open tools.