Quickstart
Install the CLI, get an answer, and know what to do when a step does not work. Budget ten minutes.
If you only want to see it work, you do not need this page yet. Go to saylek.com, enter your email, and open the sign-in link that comes back. You land in a Circle seeded with our demo machines, so you can ask a question and read a real answer with nothing installed, no hardware of your own, and no invitation. Come back here when you want a machine of yours answering too.
Saylek pools GPUs across a Circle of people you trust. When your GPU is idle it covers your Circle; when yours is busy, or you do not have one, your Circle covers you. No money changes hands, and every served request leaves a signed record of where it ran.
Before you start, know one thing about the model you are joining: a request your own machine cannot serve runs on a Circle-mate's GPU, which means your prompt is handled by their computer. That is the trade Saylek makes. Privacy and egress explains it and how to turn it off.
Before you begin
| You need | Detail |
|---|---|
| A supported machine | Released binaries target Linux x86_64 and macOS arm64 (Apple Silicon). |
| An account | Create one at saylek.com with your email. It opens straight away. No invitation is needed, here or anywhere else: an invitation grows a Circle you are already in, it is not the door. |
| Your install command | Sign in, then press Set it up on your home page. It hands you the command in step 1 with a download token already in it, bound to your account. |
| Outbound HTTPS | The installer fetches a signed release; the daemon reaches your Circle over HTTPS. |
| A GPU | Only if you want to host. Consuming from your Circle works fine with no GPU at all. |
You do not need Docker, a Rust or Python toolchain, or sudo. Everything runs from the
released binary.
1. Install
Paste the command your home page handed you. It has this shape, with a real token where
<token> sits:
curl -fsSL https://saylek.com/i/<token> | sh
This verifies the release signature, installs saylek under ~/.saylek/, registers a
user-level service, and launches saylek gpu wizard.
Prefer to read before you run? The URL serves a plain shell script, so fetch it, read it, then run it:
curl -fsSL https://saylek.com/i/<token> -o saylek-install.sh
less saylek-install.sh
sh saylek-install.sh
You know it worked when saylek --version prints a version.
2. Check the daemon is up
saylek status
You know it worked when status reports the daemon running. Add --watch to live-tail
the state while something is settling.
If it is not running, start it with saylek start. Note that saylek start runs in the
foreground and holds the terminal until you stop it, which surprises people who expect it
to return to the prompt. Either open a second terminal for the commands below, or background
it with saylek start &. On a normal install a service manager keeps the daemon up for you,
so you should rarely need to run it by hand at all.
3. Ask your first question
saylek call "what is a trust-pool, in one sentence?"
You know it worked when you get an answer back.
If nothing is set up to answer yet, saylek call says so in plain language and points at
the next step, such as saylek start when the daemon is down or saylek gpu wizard when
no model is loaded. It does not dead-end. Run it with no prompt for a built-in one-line
smoke test.
4. Pick where you go next
You are running. Choose by what you came for:
- Use your Circle's capacity from an app: Connect your app for a local client, or Use your Circle from anywhere for the hosted endpoint.
- Contribute your GPU: Hosting your GPU.
- Bring someone in: Invite flow.
- Understand what you joined: Concepts.
If something went wrong
Common first-run stops, with the full list on Troubleshooting:
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
model_not_found on your first call | Daemon is up but no model is loaded yet | saylek gpu wizard, then saylek model ls |
saylek: command not found after install | ~/.saylek/bin is not on your PATH | Open a new shell, or add it to your shell profile |
| Calls fail with no Host available | No Host in your Circle is online right now | saylek status; try again when one is back |
| Everything fails after enabling local-only | Local-only means local, including when local cannot answer. It stops Saylek routing to another member; it does not override a proxy upstream you configured yourself | Unset local_only, or load a model you can serve |
Uninstalling
Two different scopes, and it matters which you mean:
saylek wipe # remove this device's local files only
saylek settings account delete # leave Saylek entirely (90-day soft delete)
saylek wipe says nothing about the server: your account and Circles remain. To step away
without deleting anything, saylek settings account deactivate is fully reversible. The
CLI reference has the whole table.
Next steps
- Concepts: Circle, Host, Guest, Pool, and receipts.
- Privacy and egress: what leaves your machine.
- Troubleshooting: when a step does not behave.
Last checked 2026-07-24 · read as markdown at /docs/quickstart.md