How it works

One machine, one woodl

A birch is a Mac with Apple silicon; a pine, a PC with an NVIDIA card; an oak, any other computer.

Your computer is a woodl

A desk at night with the moon in the window. A birch woodl stands on lit roots between a mug and a lamp that is off; its label reads working. — Plate I Working Night, and the owner is away: the birch stands on its roots, and requests arrive as light.

The same desk with the lamp on. The birch woodl sits beside its roots; its label reads resting, and a note reads stopped in 47 to 151 milliseconds. — Plate II Resting The lamp comes on and a key is touched: the birch steps off its roots. Stopped in 47–151 ms on one Mac.

When you step away, your computer serves open-source AI models for other people. The moment you’re back, it stops, and the model stays loaded so it can start again when you leave. If a game or a video app needs the graphics chip, it lets the model go.

The woodls command shows the same five faces as the drawings:

The drawing	Face	What it’s doing
	(o_o)	Working. Serving a job while you’re away; seeds ripen at its roots.
	(-_-)	Resting. You touched the machine, so it stepped off its roots. The model stays loaded.
	(u_u)	Dormant. A game or video app needed the GPU, so it let the model go.
	(^_^)	Done. It finished something for you, such as opening your account.
	(x_x)	Stopped. Something went wrong; the terminal says what, and what to do.

Seeds

A new kind of credit, grown by lending your computer.

Every job earns seeds

The birch woodl at work on its desk at night, with small amber seeds at the tips of its roots. — Plate III Ripening Each finished job ripens an amber seed at the roots.

Every job your computer finishes earns seeds. They ripen before you can spend them: for 14 days while your computer is new to woodls, then for 7, so a cheat can still be caught. 15% of every job, the root fee, goes to Commons, a shared account kept for the network.

Limits

Seeds can’t be bought, sold, sent to someone else or turned into cash.

Spending

From any computer, even an old laptop.

Seeds pay for your AI

A plate split in two. On the day side, an old laptop with lines of text on its screen; on the night side, under the moon, a pine woodl on lit roots with amber seeds. A thin line joins them. — Plate IV Day and night An old laptop asks in the day; a pine answers where it’s night.

When you need AI, you spend seeds. Your request goes to a computer that’s free, often one where it’s night, and the answer comes back, even to an old laptop.

Limits

The computer that answers can read your request. For private work, use a grove: your own machines, serving each other.

Receipts

Signed by the computer that did the work.

Every job is checked

An oak woodl stands under two receipts, one ticked and one crossed in red. Beside it a pine woodl has fallen over, with red x eyes. — Plate V Checked A checker re-runs a job from its receipt. The cheater falls over, and its seeds go back.

The computer that runs a job signs a receipt for it, with the exact words it produced. Our own machines run a share of jobs again and compare: every job while a host is new, and some after that. A host that serves a cheaper model than it claims gets caught, gives back what it was paid, and after three confirmed cheats loses its unripened seeds and is suspended.

Job	Paid	Check	Why	Given back	Seeds taken	Host
1	1,006 µseeds	passed
4	1,282 µseeds	caught	impossible tokens	1,090 µseeds
5	700 µseeds	caught	disagreed	595 µseeds
8	850 µseeds	caught	impossible tokens	723 µseeds	856 µseeds	suspended
9	462 µseeds	caught	impossible tokens	393 µseeds		suspended

A host that served cheaper 2-bit weights while claiming the 4-bit file: its five checked jobs, as they happened. Four were caught, for tokens the claimed model could never have chosen, or for too many that disagreed with it. Each payer got back what the host was paid (the root fee isn’t refunded yet); at the third confirmed cheat its unripened seeds went to Commons, and it was suspended.

Read from bench/results/m4-cheater-live-2026-09-26.csv when this page was built. One MacBook Pro (M5 Max), with two hosts and two checkers on it, 26 September 2026.

The ring ledger

Records that only grow, like the rings of a tree.

Every seed is on the Rings

Concentric rings drawn in white on the blue plate, like the rings of a cut tree. — Plate VI The rings Every seed is written into rings that only grow, and anyone can check them.

Every change to a balance is an entry in the Rings. Entries are sealed into rings that only grow, and witnesses called rangers co-sign each ring, so the history can’t be quietly rewritten. Anyone can check it. There’s no blockchain, no mining and no coin.

Limits

The public copy of the ledger opens with the alpha COMING.
Until independent rangers join, the two that co-sign are stand-ins run by woodls.
Rangers show the history was never rewritten. Whether each entry is right is checked by replaying the ledger from the start.

Short answers

Each with its page.

Questions people ask

Will it slow my computer down? It works only while you’re away and stops within 47–151 ms of a touch, in our tests on one Mac. Hosting has the details.

Can it see my files? The engine runs in a sandbox that can’t open your home folder, Documents, the keychain or ~/.ssh.

What about electricity? Hosting uses it. The calculator works it out from your own figures.

Who can read my request? The computer that answers it. Hosts aren’t told who you are, and secrets and common personal data are removed on your machine first.

Is it crypto? No coin, no mining and no blockchain. Seeds are a credit that can’t become cash.

Who’s behind it? A small company in India, CyberChakra Technology.