A box with the LosOS edge

An edge is a server on the internet that a box keeps a tunnel open to. Through it, the box gets a public address with no port opened at home, joins the mesh of other boxes, and (once it opens) trades on the market. The LosOS edge is the one the project runs; it is the only edge whose market pays out.

What the edge does for a box

Feature	How
Remote access	https://<your-name>.<edge domain> reaches LosOS cloud and LosOS Git through an encrypted tunnel the box opens outwards. The admin pages are never published: they stay LAN-only even through the tunnel.
The mesh	The box joins a Kubernetes cluster the edge runs. Its spare disk becomes part of a shared, replicated pool; its spare CPU runs other people's work inside the hours you allow, only while the box is idle.
The market	Being paid for the disk and CPU you share, and buying some from others. Payment is by card through Stripe; the edge keeps a 4 % fee. Built end to end, not open yet: a platform needs a registered business behind it. The Market tab shows as "soon" until then.
Find my box	The edge hosts the page that finds a box on your LAN from a browser.

How a box finds its edge

Every 20 seconds the box looks for an edge on two roads:

• on the local network, by DNS-SD: an edge set up to announce itself publishes _losos-edge._tcp over mDNS with the address of its API, and the box finds it the same way it finds its own .local name;
• at the configured address, the LosOS edge's control plane unless the owner changed it (Settings → Advanced, losos.proxy.registrarUrl). It is asked whether or not Reachable from outside your home is on.

An edge counts as found once its /health answers. Several can be in reach at once, a company's edge on the LAN and the LosOS edge over the internet, say. The Mesh pane shows one row per edge, On this network or Over the internet, each with a sign saying whether it is official (below), or No edge proxy found with what the box tried: "This box searched its network and asked <address>; nothing answered."

While nothing answers, the box refuses to turn network-dependent sharing on. Switching storage to mesh mode, Join the mesh and Share this box's disk with the mesh are greyed with "Needs an edge proxy in reach.", and an apply that turns one of them on anyway is refused with the same reason. Settings that are already on are left alone, so a box whose edge went away keeps its configuration, can still change everything else, and can always turn sharing off. Your own files and apps never depend on the edge. The tunnel switch is not gated either: it simply reconnects when the edge answers again.

Official or not

Any edge that answers opens sharing. Only the LosOS edge may run the market, and a box has to be able to tell it from any other edge, so finding an edge and trusting it with money are two different questions. Every box carries a LosOS root public key. An official edge proves itself on every scan: it presents a certificate signed with the matching private key, which only the project holds, offline, and it signs a fresh challenge the box just made up with the certificate's own key. Four checks, all or nothing.

The result is the sign beside each edge's name on the Mesh pane: a check for an official edge, a warning for any other, with a tooltip listing what that edge cannot do for this box (buying on the market, selling this box's spare storage and compute). A box that cannot verify the signature treats the edge as a company edge: discovery, remote access and sharing work, trading does not, and the Market pane says "The edge proxy this box found is not run by LosOS." Nothing a company configures can make its own edge official, by design.

Until the key is published

The root key file every box ships is empty until the project publishes the public key. Until then no edge is official, every edge wears the warning sign and the market is off on every box. That is the safe direction to fail in.

The key itself is made on the project owner's own computer, never on a box or an edge, with a tool that first signs the person in with GitHub and refuses anyone whose account is not on a short list committed with the project. The same tool signs each official edge's certificate and installs it over SSH. For operators, the steps are in the provisioning runbook.

Enrolment at the edge (which box may tunnel through it) is a separate matter: the edge keeps an allow-list of boxes, each with a token, and a box is listed there by whoever runs the edge.

Settings that matter

Pane	Setting	What it does
Network	Reachable from outside your home	opens the tunnel to the edge
Advanced	losos.proxy.registrarUrl	the edge address asked over the internet, besides the local network
Mesh	Join the mesh	enrols this box in the edge's cluster; needs an edge in reach
Mesh	Lend this box while I sleep	lends CPU inside the hours below, while idle; needs the mesh joined
Mesh	Hours	the daily window, in this box's own time zone
Market	Share this box's disk with the mesh	lends spare room to the pool; needs an edge in reach; greyed with the market until it opens

What the edge sees

The box's name, its heartbeat, which features it has on, and the traffic it tunnels (encrypted end to end with a key the box pins on first contact). It does not see the admin pages, the owner's password or the disk key. The security model lists the trust boundaries.

The demo edge

For presentations, the edge's control plane also runs on Vercel at losos-edge.dasmat.us, with its registry in a small database. That host can register boxes and show them on a status page, but it cannot carry a tunnel, run the mesh or take payments; those need the real edge server.