ChatGPT and Gemini are overcomplicating your homelab—here's how to stop it

Published Aug 12, 2026, 7:30 AM EDT Adam has a degree in Engineering and has a life-long interest in technology. He has been writing for over a decade for various print and online publications, with a focus on consumer tech. He joined How-To Geek in 2024 while working at Pocket-lint. As well as being a long-term fan of Apple products, he also has a strong interest in smart home tech, running a Home Assistant server at home to automate all his smart home devices. He believes that the ideal smart home should work with minimal interaction from the user, with automations running as if by magic rather than requiring you to push buttons on a control panel. You can find more of his work on Muck Rack. AI chatbots can help you solve technical problems you may not be able to solve by yourself. The problem is that even when a chatbot's solutions work, they can be completely overcomplicated. If you're using an AI such as ChatGPT or Gemini to help you set up your homelab, there are a few tips that can help you find the right solution for your needs. AI chatbots seem to love complexity Suggestions are often total overkill Credit: Patrick Campanale / How-To Geek A friend has been using AI to help them set up a homelab. They're not the most technical, so they regularly turn to the AI when they get stuck. This is exactly what an AI chatbot is useful for; you can explain what you're trying to do, and the chatbot will walk you through how to do it. The problem is that when my friend tells me what the AI has suggested, I keep having to course-correct the insanely overcomplicated solutions. For example, if asked about setting up ad-blocking, instead of a simple Pi-hole instance, a chatbot might suggest setting up two different devices, with Pi-hole running on each, and tell you to set up Nebula Sync to keep both instances in sync. While running two instances of Pi-hole is a good idea to ensure you still have internet access if one instance goes down, it's total overkill for someone who is just getting started in homelabbing and wants to see what Pi-hole actually does. LLMs aren't just trained on data about people setting up small homelabs; they're also trained on a ton of data about enterprise solutions. The AI chatbot may suggest solutions that are wholly inappropriate for a beginner setup. Tell the AI to optimize for simplicity Give your chatbot constraints The good news is that for the most part, AI chatbots may do at least some of what they're told. You can give a chatbot constraints, and it will often follow them. You don't need to try using a less capable model, either; the complexity of the solutions that the chatbot will provide often depends more on the prompt than the model you're using. Try using some of the following phrases in prompts to encourage the chatbot to give you simple solutions instead of overly complex ones: Give me the simplest reliable solution Avoid adding new software unless totally necessary Tell me the easiest solution for a total beginner What's the quickest way to achieve this goal? Give me the absolute minimum steps needed to get this working You should find that with the right prompts, you can guide the AI chatbot into giving you simpler solutions. You may still get some over-the-top responses, but they should happen less frequently. Force the AI to search instead of guessing The answer is usually out there This is something that still drives me insane when using AI chatbots. If I'm trying to solve a problem, the chatbot will start going down a rabbit hole and asking me to run all sorts of random tests to rule out issues that I already know aren't the cause of the problem. When I ask the chatbot to search for information about people who have had a similar problem, it almost always comes back with a response saying it found examples of other people with similar problems, and they managed to solve them by doing X or Y. This is the information I wanted at the outset, but many chatbots seem to want to try to solve the problems using their own internal knowledge, which can be outdated or simply not contain the specific problem that I'm having. I've now resorted to asking the AI to "look it up" with my very first prompt when trying to solve a problem. More often than not, it will find the solution on a forum or in a Reddit post, and I don't have to waste another hour of my time. Don't always accept the first answer You're entitled to a second opinion This is something else that I've found can help. If a solution seems complicated, you can ask the chatbot to try again. In many cases, the second response can be far more useful. You can ask if there is a simpler approach, or if there is an alternative method to get the same result. You can also ask the chatbot to critique its own recommendation. For example, use a prompt such as "Considering the fact that I am a homelab beginner who wants to set things up in the quickest and easiest way possible, critique your previous solution and suggest improvements or alternatives." This can force the chatbot to rethink its approach and find a simpler solution. A chatbot can be helpful with the right guidance You can set constraints and ask for second opinions, but at some point you have to take it on faith that the chatbot's solution is genuinely the best and simplest way to get things done. The more you learn about homelabbing, the easier it will become to judge whether a chatbot's solution is appropriate.