For me it is writting docker compose files describing my services. I like to test them on my machine before pushing them to the server(s). But I guess that’s my own fault for not using something like portainer or even SSHFS.
What’s the most annoying / painful step for you?
I am separating home lab itself and servers running some useful staff at home, like homeassistant, which more like “home production services”. Pure home should be powered off most of time, if you just doing some on-prem experiments there.