# Concepts Saylek is a **member-governed trust-pool for GPU inference**: a Circle you belong to, rather than a vendor you pay. No money changes hands. Members contribute spare GPU capacity to a shared Circle and draw on it when they need an answer. Five ideas carry the whole product. Read this page before Quickstart if you want to know what you are joining; read [Privacy and egress](/docs/privacy-and-egress) before you send anything sensitive. ## Circle A **Circle** is the trust boundary. It grows by invite, one person at a time, and there is no anonymous pool: every machine that can serve you is run by a member of a Circle you belong to. Be precise about what that does and does not mean: - On an **invite-only** Circle (the default when you create one), members are admitted by the Circle's owner, or by an owner or admin when an organization owns it. An ordinary member cannot bring someone in. - That person is **not necessarily you**. Unless you own the Circle, someone else decides who joins it, and your requests can run on the machines they admit. - A Circle can also be set to **open-join**, in which case people join without an invite at all. So the unit of trust is the **Circle**, not each individual: joining one means accepting whoever its owner admits. [Circles and membership](/docs/circles) covers both settings and how to tell which kind you are in. If you want a Circle where you personally approved every member, create it yourself and keep it invite-only. ## Host and Guest - A **Host** contributes GPU capacity. When a Host's GPU is idle, it serves requests from the Circle. Hosting is always an explicit choice: run `saylek host`. Nothing else turns it on. - A **Guest** draws on that capacity. "Guest" is the internal name for the consuming side, not a stranger: a Guest is always a fellow member of your Circle. Most members are both, at different times, on the same machine. Consuming never makes you a Host, and hosting never happens by accident. Your own work keeps priority on your own GPU. A Circle request is not allowed to starve something you are waiting on yourself. ## Pool The **Pool** is the aggregate capacity your Circle can draw on: the sum of every member's idle GPU time. It is what covers a burst that would otherwise mean renting a GPU or calling a hosted API. ## Consumption is on by default This is the behaviour most worth understanding, because it is the one that acts without being switched on. When you ask for a model **your own machine cannot serve**, and a Host in your Circle can, the request runs on that Host's GPU automatically. There is no toggle to find. Joining a Circle is what enables it. That means your prompt, and everything your tool put in the context window with it, leaves your machine and is handled in the clear by another member's computer while it computes the answer. Receipts prove **where** a request ran. They do not hide its content from the Host that ran it. Two facts bound this: - With **no live Circle membership**, nothing egresses. Leaving your last Circle withdraws the default. - **Local-only mode** stops Saylek routing your requests to anyone else, persistently or per request. It governs Saylek's own routing; it does not override a proxy upstream you configured yourself. See [Privacy and egress](/docs/privacy-and-egress). ## Receipts Every served request leaves a signed record naming which machine ran it. Both sides keep a copy. It is not there because anyone distrusts their Circle. It is what keeps the give and take fair without anyone keeping score, and it is yours to replay and verify offline. ## No money Saylek's release frame has no money movement, no billing, and no redeemable credits. Contribution and consumption are social: reciprocity inside a Circle you chose, not a transaction with a stranger. ## Next steps - [Privacy and egress](/docs/privacy-and-egress): exactly what leaves your machine, and how to stop it. - [Quickstart](/docs/quickstart): install and ask your first question. - [Circles and membership](/docs/circles): joining, leaving, and who can reach you.