My Tachikoma ThinkPads: A Self-Hosted Sync Network for One Human and Many Terminals

I don’t run a modern “stack.” I run a tiny personal universe: one human, a small cloud node, and a flock of 2011–2012 ThinkPads running Linux Mint. What I wanted was simple to describe and weird to implement:

• One canonical Documents folder that lives in the cloud.
• Eight or so laptops (ThinkPad X220s and a W520) that all carry a local copy.
• Only one laptop on at a time, ever, like rotating terminals.
• Whichever laptop I’m using should sync to the cloud, shut down, and then the next laptop should wake up with that exact same Documents folder.

I don’t want shared drives, team collaboration, or “my family’s photos from 2011.” I want what the Tachikoma have in Ghost in the Shell: independent bodies, shared mind. They go off, do their thing, then sync into a collective oversoul. Next day they wake up with the same memories. That’s exactly what I want for my laptops.

The Core Tool: Syncthing

The whole trick is built on Syncthing: an open-source, peer-to-peer, encrypted file sync engine. It is not “yet another cloud drive.” It:

• Watches specific folders (in my case, ~/Documents).
• Securely syncs changes between devices.
• Uses device IDs and keypairs instead of “accounts and passwords.”
• Does versioning and conflict handling for you.
• Runs on Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS (via Mobius Sync).

It looks deceptively simple, almost old-school. Under the hood it’s very smart: delta sync, concurrency handling, per-folder settings, selective versioning, and a clean web UI on localhost:8384. It feels like rsync grew a brain, a web dashboard, and a healthy paranoia about encryption.

The Architecture: Promoting the Droplet to “Master Tachikoma”

Most Syncthing setups are a pure mesh: every device is equal. Mine isn’t. I deliberately promoted a cloud node to be the authoritative source. Here’s the mental model:

• DigitalOcean Droplet – the canonical, always-on “oversoul” copy of Documents.
• ThinkPads – interchangeable Tachikoma-style terminals that sync with that oversoul.
• Human (me) – the one ghost that possesses whichever Tachikoma (laptop) is awake.

Only one laptop is ever powered on at once. That constraint changes everything:

• No messy conflict resolution; the droplet always receives one coherent timeline of edits.
• Each laptop simply pulls from and pushes to the same canonical folder.
• The droplet acts as master copy and off-site backup, not just a relay.

So yes, in my design, the cloud node absolutely stores the Documents folder. It’s not just signalling and discovery. It’s the “master Tachikoma brain” living on a rented slice of silicon in New York.

The Cloud Brain: A Tiny DigitalOcean Droplet

For the “oversoul” I use a small VPS on DigitalOcean:

• Plan: Regular SSD, 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM
• Storage: 25GB SSD (plenty for my ~7GB of docs)
• Cost: about $6/month plus $1.80/month for automatic snapshots/backups

DigitalOcean’s tiers scale quickly if you have huge data:

• $4/month → 10GB SSD
• $6/month → 25GB SSD
• $12/month → 50GB SSD
• $18/month → 60GB SSD
• $24/month → 80GB SSD
• $48/month → 160GB SSD

If you’re trying to synchronize 500GB of photos or 2TB of video, this gets expensive fast and you probably want a different architecture (NAS, object store, or traditional cloud drive). But my world is docs, spreadsheets, PDFs, HTML, text, JSON. My entire working set is small and mostly compressible. For that, a 25GB droplet with Syncthing is perfect.

On the droplet, Syncthing runs as a service and stores its copy of my Documents folder right on the VPS. I SSH in only to update packages or peek at logs; otherwise it just exists as my quiet ghost-server in the background.

How My System Actually Works Day to Day

1. Morning: W520 at the Desk

At home, the W520 is my “main terminal.”

• Linux Mint boots.
• Syncthing starts automatically as a user systemd service (systemctl --user enable syncthing).
• It connects to the droplet over the internet, using Syncthing’s encrypted channel.
• Syncthing compares its local ~/Documents with the droplet’s copy and pulls/pushes any differences.

After a minute, both sides show “Up to Date”. From that point on, any time I save, rename, or delete something in ~/Documents on the W520, Syncthing quietly and reliably mirrors that change to the droplet.

2. Shut Down: The Ghost Leaves the Body

When I’m done at the desk:

• I wait for Syncthing to show that all changes are synced.
• I shut down the W520.
• The droplet now holds the current master state of Documents.

At this moment, the droplet is – in Tachikoma terms – the satellite that stores the entire memory of the collective.

3. Another Terminal Wakes Up: An X220 in a Bag Somewhere

Later I might grab an X220 that lives in a GORUCK, a satchel, or some other bag. Different day, different hardware shell:

• The X220 boots Linux Mint.
• Syncthing auto-starts, connects to the droplet, and immediately sees: “Your local Documents are older than the canonical copy.”
• It pulls down only what changed since the last time that X220 was online.

Within a short time, that X220’s ~/Documents matches the droplet exactly. From my perspective, it feels like I picked up the same machine in a different shell.

4. Repeat Forever

Because only one laptop is ever on at a time:

• I don’t get simultaneous edits or nasty conflicts.
• Syncthing’s sophisticated conflict logic is mostly there as a safety net, not a daily feature.
• The droplet is always the arbiter of truth: each session is “sync from droplet → work → sync back.”

The Tachikoma analogy is literal: each ThinkPad is a separate chassis with its own little quirks, but the “mind” – my Documents – is centralized, versioned, and persistent.

Why Tachikoma Are the Right Metaphor

In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, the Tachikoma are small, blue, spider-tank AIs with childlike personalities and scary hardware. There are multiple bodies, multiple perspectives, and one synchronized shared memory:

Though they possess individual artificial intelligence, every night they are synchronized, so they start the next day with identical consciousnesses that are each the sum of their total collective experience and development.

That’s the part I care about – not the guns, not the plot beats, not the politics. I care about:

• Independent agents doing their own thing during the “day.”
• A shared repository where their experience is merged and stored.
• An emergent sense of a collective ghost – something more than the sum of the parts.

My ThinkPads are my Tachikoma. The DigitalOcean droplet is their nightly sync node, their data satellite, their oversoul. I’m less interested in canonical cyberpunk drama and more interested in that quiet, weird, metaphysical question:

What does it mean when multiple bodies share one continuous memory?

In my case it means: I can pick up any ThinkPad and all my work is just… there. No USB sticks, no “which laptop has the latest file?”, no mental overhead. Just interchangeable bodies with one brain.

The Hardware, Briefly: Why I Froze Time at the X220/W520 Era

My evolution stopped around the Lenovo X220 and W520 for one very petty, very honest reason: keyboards. The moment everything went chiclet, I stopped caring about new laptops.

The X220 and W520 are perfect for my use case:

• Fantastic, old-school, clicky ThinkPad keyboards.
• Upgradeable RAM (X220 officially 8GB, actually handles 16GB; W520 officially 16GB, happily runs 32GB).
• Replaceable 2.5" SSDs – swap in 500GB or 1TB and they feel “infinite” for text-based work.
• Built like bricks, easy to find used, easy to refurbish.

I regularly pick up an X220 for around $130 on eBay, add RAM and an SSD, toss in a Linux Mint installer, and I’ve got another perfectly good “Tachikoma” in the fleet. Most of them only need 128–256GB for what I do. Once Syncthing guarantees that ~/Documents is safe on the droplet, I can aggressively clean local cruft with tools like BleachBit and not worry about losing anything important.

Someday I may restomod these frames with fully modern internals. For now, they’re ideal as low-drama, text-first terminals for my ghost to inhabit.

How You Could Build Your Own Version

You don’t need a fleet of elderly ThinkPads to do this. You just need:

• At least two devices (laptops, desktops, phones) you want to keep in sync.
• A small always-on node (could be a VPS like DigitalOcean, a home server, a NAS, or a Raspberry Pi).
• The will to say, “this node holds the canonical copy of this folder.”

High-Level Steps

1. Spin up a small VPS (DigitalOcean, Linode, Hetzner, etc.).
2. Install Syncthing on the VPS and on each local device.
3. Create a Documents folder on the VPS; make that the master.
4. On each device:
   • Add the VPS as a Syncthing device (using its device ID).
   • Share your local ~/Documents with the VPS and let it sync.
5. Decide on your workflow:
   • My style: one device at a time, droplet as canonical brain.
   • Team style: many devices online at once, trust Syncthing’s conflict handling.

A Prompt You Can Hand to an AI If You Want Help

You can literally paste this into your own AI assistant to get a personalized setup guide:

“Help me set up Syncthing so that a small VPS (DigitalOcean or similar) holds the 
canonical copy of my Documents folder, and my other devices (Windows, macOS, 
Linux, Android, iOS/Mobius Sync) all keep that folder in sync. I want the VPS to 
store the files (not just relay), I want encrypted connections, and I only plan 
to use one device at a time most days. Walk me through installation, device 
pairing, folder sharing, and basic safety/backup tips.”

Is This Backup, Sync, or Something Stranger?

Technically it’s all three:

• Sync: Syncthing keeps my Documents folder identical across devices.
• Backup: The droplet stores the entire folder; DigitalOcean snapshots back that up again; Syncthing’s versioning keeps history on each client.
• Something stranger: It’s a personal, low-rent, Tachikoma-inspired experiment in shared consciousness for machines I work through.

Most people would just pay for a cloud drive and be done. I wanted something a bit more idiosyncratic and much more under my control. And, frankly, I like the poetry of it: old ThinkPads, one tiny cloud brain, a quiet encrypted sync loop humming away in the background.

Glossary

• Syncthing – Open-source, encrypted, peer-to-peer file synchronization tool. https://syncthing.net/
• Droplet – DigitalOcean’s term for a virtual private server (VPS). DigitalOcean Droplets
• Documents folder – The single folder I sync everywhere (no photos, media, etc.).
• X220 / W520 – Classic Lenovo ThinkPads from ~2011 with proper keyboards and great Linux support.
• Tachikoma – Spider-tank AIs from Ghost in the Shell with childlike personalities, individual bodies, and a nightly shared memory sync.
• Oversoul – My term for the canonical shared state; in this setup, the droplet’s copy of Documents.
• Versioning – Syncthing’s ability to keep older file versions when things change or conflict.

FAQ

Why not just use Dropbox/Google Drive/iCloud?

Because I don’t need 2TB of random storage; I need a tightly-scoped, encrypted, self-hosted sync brain for one specific folder. I also like owning the infrastructure and not tying my workflow to one company’s UI or pricing model.

Does the DigitalOcean droplet really store your files?

Yes. In my design, the droplet holds the canonical copy of Documents, and all laptops sync against it. It’s both “brain” and off-site backup.

Is Syncthing just a relay here?

No. Syncthing is the engine that keeps folders in sync across all devices. The droplet is one of those devices, configured as my master node.

Can this work with Windows or macOS?

Absolutely. Syncthing has native builds for Windows and macOS, and you can mix and match them with Linux boxes, phones, and tablets.

What if two machines are online at the same time?

Syncthing handles that too. It will detect simultaneous edits and create conflict files rather than silently destroying data. My “one device at a time” rule just means I almost never hit that edge case.

Is this overkill?

For most people, yes. For me, it’s the exact right kind of overkill: simple daily experience, complex and interesting under the hood.

Named Tachikoma (for Naming Your Own Boxen)

If you want to christen your own machines like I’m doing, here are some canonically named Tachikoma from the Ghost in the Shell universe:

• Max – one of the individualized Tachikoma in Solid State Society.
• Musashi – another named unit, referencing Miyamoto Musashi.
• Loki – mischievous name lifted for a Tachikoma AI partner.
• Conan – another oversoul-style AI name used in the same context.

Beyond the explicitly named ones, you’ve also got archetypal Tachikoma roles you can riff on:

• Batou’s hyperactive personal Tachikoma.
• The more logical, straight-man Tachikoma.
• The slower, more contemplative Tachikoma.
• The bookworm / intellectual Tachikoma disassembled for science.

Plenty of room there to name an entire swarm of ThinkPads after the little blue machines that just wanted to understand the world and each other.

If you’re reading this because you also hoard old ThinkPads, love Ghost in the Shell a little too much, and want your own tiny sync-cult of machines: welcome. You’re among friends.