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Getting started

  • Windows, with OpenSSH. It is built into Windows 10 and 11.
  • A RunPod account with some balance. offrig uses RunPod’s secure cloud.
  • Zed, if you want the pod’s models in an editor. The CLI and the side-car work without it.
  1. Download offrig-<version>-windows-x64.zip from the Releases page.

  2. Check it against the release’s SHA256SUMS:

    Terminal window
    Get-FileHash .\offrig-<version>-windows-x64.zip -Algorithm SHA256
  3. Unzip it somewhere on your PATH, for example %USERPROFILE%\.local\bin. It holds three programs:

    • offrig.exe, the CLI;
    • offrig-app.exe, the desktop app;
    • offrig-mcp.exe, the side-car for agents.

To build from source instead, clone the repository and run cargo build --release. The compiler version is pinned in rust-toolchain.toml.

  1. Create an API key in RunPod’s console. Put it in the user environment variable RUNPOD_API_KEY. offrig reads it from there and never writes it anywhere.

    Terminal window
    setx RUNPOD_API_KEY "<your key>"

    Open a new terminal afterwards so the variable is visible.

  2. Add your SSH public key in RunPod’s account settings. offrig uses ~/.ssh/runpod_rustline if it exists, then ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.

Check it works. This costs nothing:

offrig status
offrig gpus --count 1

status prints your balance, current spend and runway, then every pod on the account, each marked offrig, lane or other. gpus lists live offers for a GPU count, with price and stock.

The small tier is the cheapest way to see the whole loop: one small card running qwen3:4b, at about $0.25 an hour.

offrig up small

offrig shows the cheapest free match and your runway with the pod running, then:

  1. creates the pod and waits for SSH;
  2. pulls the profile’s models on the pod;
  3. opens the tunnel on 127.0.0.1:11435;
  4. adds the pod’s models to Zed as their own offrig provider;
  5. runs the seven guard checks.

It then holds the tunnel until you stop it. In Zed, the models appear in the agent panel as “RunPod · …”. Restart Zed once after the first launch so it sees OFFRIG_API_KEY.

When you’re done:

offrig down small --yes

The pod is terminated and billing stops. Its disk goes with it.