On point 1 and 4. Having your own mail server to me is important for the sake of privacy and not having a provider spy on your email (ie: Google). Setting up and maintaining a mail server is not hard when using MailCow (all docker containers). Been using it for a little over 2 years now and it has been easy to maintain and no issue with my ISP. I suggest check it out. I think having a push notification is important to stay on top of your homelab. I have my Ansible playbooks, Uptime-Kuma, Portainer (Docker containers) all push notifications to Gotify (also a docker container) and receive it as a text to my phone, email or both. Also there is an Gotify app available for iPhone and Android. Here is a good link for setting up MailCow if you are interested. https://virtarix.com/blog/how-to-set-up-a-mail-server-with-mailcow/

Welcome

Nice write-up. One additional recommendation is to create a checklist of steps to follow for when you build your server so you don't forget an item that will bite you later. IE: firewall rules, permissions, apps to install, etc.

Ansible-Semaphore

Here is the link to PatchMon documentation: https://docs.patchmon.net/books