Donate your idle compute to science.

Any modern laptop or desktop will do. A few good signs:

• You leave a machine on overnight or at idle. That's the compute we're after. The CLI runs only when you tell it to, on the projects you pick.
• You have a GPU (optional). Some projects (like GREP's GPU leaf) need ≥18 GB of VRAM. CPU-only projects work on anything.
• You want to know what your machine is computing. You opt in per leaf, not all at once. SciOS reviews every leaf before activation, and each one has a detail page describing what it does, how it runs, and what it needs (CPU, GPU, network). Read it before you enable it.

lettuce-volunteer is a small Go binary. Prebuilt releases live on GitHub:

github.com/jring-o/lettuce-compute/releases →

Grab the archive for your platform and put the binary on PATH:

• macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel): lettuce-volunteer-darwin-arm64 or -darwin-amd64.

  chmod +x lettuce-volunteer-darwin-*
  sudo mv lettuce-volunteer-darwin-* /usr/local/bin/lettuce-volunteer

  First launch will be blocked by Gatekeeper. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click “Open Anyway”.

• Linux (amd64 or arm64):

  chmod +x lettuce-volunteer-linux-*
  sudo mv lettuce-volunteer-linux-* /usr/local/bin/lettuce-volunteer

• Windows (amd64): lettuce-volunteer-windows-amd64.exe. Save it somewhere on your PATH (e.g. %USERPROFILE%) and call it directly. If it's not on PATH, invoke it with the full path:

  & "$env:USERPROFILE\lettuce-volunteer.exe" init

Three commands, in order:

1. Generate a keypair.

   lettuce-volunteer init

   Creates an Ed25519 keypair in ~/.lettuce/. The printed public key is your identity on the head — back it up if you care about long-term credit.

2. Attach to the SciOS Compute head.

   lettuce-volunteer attach --server infra.scios.tech

   Registers your public key with the head. You can attach to more than one head; each one is independent.

3. Pick a project and start working.

   lettuce-volunteer leafs list
   lettuce-volunteer leafs enable <slug>
   lettuce-volunteer start

   Or skip enable and let the daemon take any available work. Tune CPU, memory, and concurrency with --cpu-cores and --memory-mb.

You can crunch forever without an account — your pubkey already accumulates credit on the head. An account links that credit to a public profile and a handle you choose.

1. Create an account (email + password, or GitHub / Google).
2. Paste your public key into the bind form. The head issues a one-time challenge.
3. Run lettuce-volunteer prove-identity --challenge <hex> on the machine that holds the private key. Paste the signature back. Done.

Anything you crunched before binding shows up on your profile automatically — credit is keyed on the pubkey, and the head already knows about it. You can bind multiple keys (one per machine) to the same account.