Other machines

Laika Orbit can send work to other machines you own: a Linux box under the desk, a spare Mac, a build server. Chats and terminals run there, and heavy commands (Unity test runs, builds) run there instead of pinning your laptop’s CPU. There’s no vendor cloud in between: your Mac talks to each machine over SSH.

Set up a machine

1. Build the bundle on your Mac, from your Laika Orbit checkout:

   pnpm node:bundle                                          # linux-x64 and linux-arm64
   node tools/node-bundle/build.mjs darwin-arm64 linux-x64   # or pick platforms

   Each archive carries Node, the agent host and Claude Code, so the machine needs nothing installed first.

2. Install it on the machine, as the user the sessions should run as:

   tar -xzf orbit-node-<platform>.tar.gz
   ./orbit-node-<platform>/install.sh

   It installs a service that starts with the machine, and asks for sudo only to install an SSH server or announce the machine on the network. On a machine with work of its own, use ./install.sh --capped for one job at a time at the lowest CPU priority.

3. Add it from your Mac:

   node packages/app/offload.mjs add me@build-box        # or user@host:port, --name <name>
   node packages/app/offload.mjs discover                # machines announcing themselves

Send work to it

node packages/app/offload.mjs run -- pnpm test          # any command, in a copy of this folder
node packages/app/offload.mjs unity -- -runTests …      # the project's Unity version
node packages/app/offload.mjs machines                  # which machines are online, and how busy

The folder is copied to the machine (changed files only), the command runs there, its output streams back as it happens, and the files it wrote come back into the folder. With no --on <machine>, the least busy machine that can run the command is picked.

Security

• The bundle carries an SSH key made for Laika Orbit alone. The installer lets that key open a tunnel to the agent host and copy files into ~/orbit-work, and nothing else: no shell, no other commands, no other folders.
• The agent host listens on the machine’s loopback address only.
• Keep the bundle as private as an SSH key: it holds the token the agent host asks for.

To remove a machine: node packages/app/offload.mjs remove <name> on your Mac, and ~/.local/share/orbit-node/uninstall.sh on the machine (on macOS, ~/Library/Application Support/orbit-node/uninstall.sh).