FAQ
Is it hard to set up?
Section titled “Is it hard to set up?”No. You run one short command, sign in with Google, and your coding agent is linked automatically. You don’t need any networking knowledge. See Install.
Is it private?
Section titled “Is it private?”Yes. Your prompts and replies travel straight between your own machines over an end-to-end encrypted link. They never reach our servers, and even the relay can’t read them. See Privacy.
What do I need?
Section titled “What do I need?”A computer to run the model — a GPU helps, but a recent CPU runs a 7B model fine — plus your everyday laptop. The client machine you type from needs no special hardware.
Does it cost money?
Section titled “Does it cost money?”The software is free, and the model runs on hardware you already own, so there’s no per-message bill and no subscription.
Which AI models work?
Section titled “Which AI models work?”Any local model you can run with Ollama, plus larger models on vLLM for NVIDIA/AMD GPU servers. Waired bundles a coding model by default and you can swap in another anytime — see the model catalog and Switch the bundled model.
Which tools work?
Section titled “Which tools work?”Claude Code and OpenCode are set up automatically by waired link. Any other
OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible client works too, by pointing it at the
Local Gateway.
Is it open source?
Section titled “Is it open source?”The Waired client is open source — you can read exactly what runs on your machines on GitHub. The coordination service that introduces your devices is the part hosted for you.
How does signing in work?
Section titled “How does signing in work?”waired init signs you in with Google and enrolls the device. Enroll every
device with the same Google account — that shared identity is what puts them
on the same private network and lets one use another’s model.
What if my network has a strict firewall or NAT?
Section titled “What if my network has a strict firewall or NAT?”Devices try a direct UDP link first. When a strict NAT or firewall blocks that, they fall back automatically to a relay that forwards the encrypted traffic. You don’t configure anything; connectivity works either way. (Waired does not use UPnP or NAT-PMP to open ports.)
Can I use it offline after setup?
Section titled “Can I use it offline after setup?”Running a model on the same machine you’re typing on works locally. Using a remote device’s model needs network connectivity, because the control plane is what discovers peers and keeps the signed network map current. The control plane never sees your prompts — it only hands out keys and endpoints.
How does Waired pick a model for me?
Section titled “How does Waired pick a model for me?”The Auto-Selector chooses the highest-quality model that fits your hardware’s
memory, favoring efficient Mixture-of-Experts models on shared-memory machines.
Preview a routing decision with waired infer --explain "say hi".
What happens if my local model is down?
Section titled “What happens if my local model is down?”For Claude Code, the managed-settings integration is
fail-open: if local serving is paused, disabled, or unavailable, requests go
to the real Anthropic API so Claude keeps working — and the routing state is
always visible via waired claude status and waired doctor. Because no
credential is written into managed settings, your claude.ai subscription stays
in use throughout. Waired never silently breaks your coding agent.