How it decides
The five decisions, the four constants, and the measured runs — including the one that lost to running locally.
Docs
Four things, then you are running.
Install it, pair one machine you can already SSH to, run one job, and let an agent ask for capacity. Every command below is copied from the code in this checkout; where a step does not work yet, it says so instead of showing a placeholder.
Technical reference text on this page stays in English in this preview.
01 · Install
From a checkout.
There is no public installer yet and the source repository is private, so today this route is for people who already have checkout access. The check that the entry point runs prints the build identity and dispatches nothing.
The archive route on the download page builds, verifies and installs a macOS or Windows archive from the same checkout.
PYTHONPATH=src python3 bin/tether --version
02 · Pair a second machine
One SSH host you already trust.
A donor does not need Tether installed. Pass the SSH host you already use, and start with a dry run: it prints the nine plan lines and does not open a connection or write anything.
Qualification measures the donor before any work is allowed to use it. Its exit contract is exact: 0 qualified, 1 measured and stays local, 3 refused, 2 error.
tether pair donor-example --dry-run
tether pool
The host in the sample is a placeholder. A real host is a name in your SSH config.
03 · Run a job
Ask once, get the line that says what happened.
A plain command runs on this machine. The same command without the flag tries a donor and falls back to local on any doubt, and the fallback line names the reason.
When a job really splits, the summary line prints the split ratio and both walls, then the receipt names the pair and the digest that made the legs identical.
tether --local echo hello
tether echo hello
tether doctor
04 · From an AI agent
An agent asks for capacity over MCP.
Tether ships a stdio MCP server. Three tools: capacity and the last job card read only, and a dispatch tool that is off unless you turn it on with an environment variable.
Register it with the command your agent host accepts. Claude Code takes claude mcp add; the binary is tether mcp.
claude mcp add tether -- tether mcp serve
tether mcp
In this checkout the subcommand is tether mcp; it takes an optional --version and nothing else, so drop the trailing word if your tether build refuses it. TETHER_MCP_ALLOW_DISPATCH=1 is what enables dispatch; without it the server answers read-only questions.
Where to go next
Three doors.
What is signed
What a receipt covers, what the transport does and does not see, and how the update feed is verified.
What changed
One line per noticeable change, each with the commit that made it, so you can check any claim yourself.