neuron-tai/QUICKSTART.md

# Quickstart — Running a node and testing inference

This guide gets you from zero to a live inference request in three terminals.
Tested on: AMD Ryzen AI Max (Strix Halo APU), 124 GB RAM, Linux, CPU inference.

---

## Prerequisites

```bash
# Clone and enter repo
cd /run/media/popov/d/DEV/repos/d-popov.com/AI

# Create the virtualenv if it does not exist yet
python3 -m venv .venv

# Keep packaging tools current enough for editable installs
.venv/bin/python -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel

# Install Python packages (editable — picks up code changes immediately)
.venv/bin/pip install -e packages/tracker -e packages/node -e packages/p2p -e packages/gateway -e packages/relay

# CPU-only PyTorch (skip if you have CUDA/ROCm already)
.venv/bin/pip install torch --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu

# HuggingFace model libraries
.venv/bin/pip install transformers accelerate
```

> **NVIDIA GPU (CUDA):** replace the torch line with `pip install torch` (default index).  
> **AMD GPU (ROCm):** `pip install torch --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/rocm6.2`

### Windows / WSL2

Run the Linux commands from WSL, not Git Bash. From the repo opened in Git Bash:

```bash
wsl
cd /mnt/d/DEV/workspace/REPOS/git.d-popov.com/neuron-tai
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/python -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
.venv/bin/pip install -e packages/tracker -e packages/node -e packages/p2p -e packages/gateway -e packages/relay
.venv/bin/pip install torch --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu
.venv/bin/pip install transformers accelerate
.venv/bin/meshnet-node --help
```

If `.venv/bin/meshnet-node` is missing, the editable install step did not finish
successfully. Re-run the `.venv/bin/pip install -e ...` command above inside WSL.

WSL2 is still useful for local development, but do not rely on it for the
"another machine connects back to this node" LAN case. WSL2 commonly sits behind
Windows NAT/port-proxy behavior and may not accept inbound traffic from other LAN
machines without extra host networking setup. We intentionally leave that unfixed
because it is useful for testing NAT/relay scenarios. If you just want to bring up
a Windows node that other machines can reach directly, run the node in native
Windows PowerShell instead.

### Native Windows PowerShell node (not WSL)

Use this when the tracker is on another machine and you want Windows to host a
reachable node on the LAN.

1. Install prerequisites on Windows:
   - Python 3.11 or 3.12 from <https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/>
   - Git for Windows from <https://git-scm.com/download/win>

2. Open **PowerShell** in the cloned repo and install the node packages:

```powershell
# Example repo path; adjust to wherever you cloned it
cd D:\DEV\workspace\REPOS\git.d-popov.com\neuron-tai

python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
.\.venv\Scripts\pip.exe install -e packages\tracker -e packages\node -e packages\p2p -e packages\gateway -e packages\relay

# CPU-only PyTorch. For NVIDIA CUDA, use `pip install torch` instead.
.\.venv\Scripts\pip.exe install torch --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu
.\.venv\Scripts\pip.exe install transformers accelerate

.\.venv\Scripts\meshnet-node.exe --help
```

For `start`-specific flags, run:

```powershell
.\.venv\Scripts\meshnet-node.exe start --help
```

3. Find the Windows LAN IP address:

```powershell
ipconfig
```

Use the IPv4 address on the active Ethernet/Wi-Fi adapter, for example
`192.168.0.42`. Avoid WSL/Docker/Hyper-V adapter addresses like `172.16.x.x`,
`172.17.x.x`, or other virtual adapter IPs.

4. Allow inbound traffic for the node port in Windows Firewall. Run PowerShell as
Administrator once:

```powershell
New-NetFirewallRule `
  -DisplayName "Meshnet node 8005" `
  -Direction Inbound `
  -Action Allow `
  -Protocol TCP `
  -LocalPort 8005
```

5. Start the Windows node from normal PowerShell. Replace the tracker and
advertised host values with your actual LAN addresses:

```powershell
$env:HF_HOME = "D:\DEV\models"

.\.venv\Scripts\meshnet-node.exe start `
  --tracker http://192.168.0.179:8081 `
  --model Qwen/Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct `
  --shard-start 12 --shard-end 23 `
  --quantization bfloat16 `
  --host 0.0.0.0 `
  --advertise-host 192.168.0.42 `
  --port 8005
```

One-line variants:

```powershell
.\.venv\Scripts\meshnet-node.exe start --tracker http://192.168.0.179:8081 --model Qwen/Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct --advertise-host 192.168.0.20
.\.venv\Scripts\meshnet-node.exe start --tracker http://ai.neuron.d-popov.com --model Qwen/Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct --advertise-host 192.168.0.20
```

`--host 0.0.0.0` binds the node to all Windows interfaces. `--advertise-host`
is what the tracker gives to other nodes, so it must be the Windows LAN IP that
the tracker and peer nodes can actually reach.

If you want verbose per-hop pipeline logs while debugging a split model, add
`--debug`. Leave it off for normal runs; otherwise every generated token logs
lines like:

```text
  [node] pipeline hop 0: http://127.0.0.1:8005 start_layer=22
  [node] pipeline hop 0 returned text=' token'
```

6. From the tracker machine, verify Windows is reachable:

```bash
curl http://192.168.0.42:8005/v1/health
```

If that endpoint returns 404, that is okay: it still proves the TCP connection
reached the node process. If it times out or connection-refuses, check the
Windows Firewall rule, `--host 0.0.0.0`, the selected LAN IP, and that the node is
still running.

### Public tracker + WSS relay

For internet nodes, expose one public HTTPS host and proxy these paths:

```text
/v1/*   -> meshnet-tracker, for registration, heartbeats, routing, and OpenAI requests
/ws     -> meshnet-relay, for outbound node gossip/bridge connections
/rpc/*  -> meshnet-relay, for tracker-to-node relay requests
```

Start the tracker with the public relay URL it should advertise:

```bash
.venv/bin/meshnet-relay --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8765
.venv/bin/meshnet-tracker start \
  --host 0.0.0.0 \
  --port 8081 \
  --relay-url wss://ai.neuron.d-popov.com/ws
```

Then a node only needs the public tracker address:

```bash
.venv/bin/meshnet-node start \
  --tracker https://ai.neuron.d-popov.com \
  --model Qwen/Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct
```

No authentication is required in the prototype. The first public node for a model
must still choose that model with `--model` or a saved wizard config. After at
least one HF model node is registered, later nodes can join the public network
with only the tracker URL; the tracker assigns an uncovered shard if one exists:

```bash
.venv/bin/meshnet-node start --tracker https://ai.neuron.d-popov.com
```

Use the public tracker to verify registration and routing:

```bash
curl -s "https://ai.neuron.d-popov.com/v1/network/map" | python3 -m json.tool
curl -s "https://ai.neuron.d-popov.com/v1/route?model=qwen2.5-0.5b" | python3 -m json.tool
```

---

## Step 1 — Start the tracker (Terminal 1)

```bash
cd /run/media/popov/d/DEV/repos/d-popov.com/AI
.venv/bin/meshnet-tracker start --port 8080
```

Expected output:
```
Tracker listening on 0.0.0.0:8080
```

Keep this terminal open.

---

## Step 2 — Start a node (Terminal 2)

### Recommended model: Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct

- 0.5B parameters, ~1 GB in BF16
- No HuggingFace account or license required
- Downloads once to `~/.meshnet/models/`, cached for future runs
- 24 transformer layers (auto-detected — no need to specify)

```bash
cd /run/media/popov/d/DEV/repos/d-popov.com/AI
HF_HOME=/run/media/popov/d/DEV/models \
.venv/bin/meshnet-node start \
  --model Qwen/Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct \
  --quantization bfloat16 \
  --tracker http://localhost:8080 \
  --port 8001
```

Shard range is **auto-detected** from the curated catalog (no network call for known
models). For unknown repos, the node fetches only `config.json` (~1 KB) to read
`num_hidden_layers`. You can still pass `--shard-start` / `--shard-end` explicitly
to run a partial shard on one machine.

Expected output (after model loads):
```
  Auto-detected 24 layers → shard 0–23
================================
meshnet-node ready
  Wallet:       <address>
  Model ID:     Qwen/Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct
  Shard:        layers 0–23
  Quantization: bfloat16
  Endpoint:     http://<host>:8001
  Hardware:     CPU
================================
```

### Other model options (all CPU-friendly)

| Model | HF repo | Layers | BF16 size | Notes |
|-------|---------|--------|-----------|-------|
| Qwen2.5-0.5B | `Qwen/Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct` | 24 | ~1 GB | Fastest, no gating |
| Qwen2.5-1.5B | `Qwen/Qwen2.5-1.5B-Instruct` | 28 | ~3 GB | Better quality |
| Phi-3-mini | `microsoft/Phi-3-mini-4k-instruct` | 32 | ~7.5 GB | Best CPU quality |
| Llama-3.2-1B | `meta-llama/Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct` | 16 | ~2 GB | Requires HF login |
| Llama-3.2-3B | `meta-llama/Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct` | 28 | ~6 GB | Requires HF login |

For gated models (Llama), run `huggingface-cli login` first.

---

## Step 3 — Send an inference request (Terminal 3)

If you started the node with `--port 8001`, send the request directly to that
head node:

```bash Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct
curl -s http://localhost:8001/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "qwen2.5-0.5b",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "What is 7 times 8? Answer in one word."}],
    "stream": false
  }' | python3 -m json.tool
```

If you did not pass `--port`, `meshnet-node start` uses the first free port at
or above `7000`. Use the `Endpoint:` printed by the node instead of `8001`.

To test tracker routing/proxying, send the same OpenAI-compatible request to the
tracker, using either the full HuggingFace repo or the quick alias:

```bash
curl -s http://localhost:8080/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "qwen2.5-0.5b",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "What is 7 times 8? Answer in one word."}],
    "stream": false
  }' | python3 -m json.tool
```

Or use the test script:

```bash
.venv/bin/python scripts/test_lan_inference.py \
  --tracker http://localhost:8080 \
  --gateway http://localhost:8001
```

---

## Two-node split (same machine, two terminals)

Split Qwen2.5-0.5B's 24 layers across two node processes to test the sharded pipeline:

**Node A — layers 0–11 (tracker mode, serves chat completions):**
```bash
HF_HOME=/run/media/popov/d/DEV/models \
.venv/bin/meshnet-node start \
  --model Qwen/Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct \
  --shard-start 0 --shard-end 11 \
  --quantization bfloat16 \
  --tracker http://localhost:8080 \
  --port 8001
```

**Node B — layers 12–23:**
```bash
HF_HOME=/run/media/popov/d/DEV/models \
.venv/bin/meshnet-node start \
  --model Qwen/Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct \
  --shard-start 12 --shard-end 23 \
  --quantization bfloat16 \
  --tracker http://localhost:8080 \
  --port 8002
```

Send the request to Node A — it tokenizes, runs layers 0–13, passes binary
activations to Node B, and streams the final response back.

---

## Two-machine LAN test (Linux + Windows/WSL2)

See `docs/TWO_MACHINE_TEST.md` (created by US-018).

For WSL2 nodes, registration only proves the node can reach the tracker
outbound. Tracker-routed inference also requires the tracker to reach the node's
advertised endpoint inbound. Either run the node in native Windows PowerShell,
configure Windows port forwarding into WSL for the node port, or start the
tracker with a relay URL so the node registers a `relay_addr`.

---

## Browse available models

```bash
# Show curated list with VRAM requirements
.venv/bin/meshnet-node models

# Browse HuggingFace Hub top-20 text-generation models
.venv/bin/meshnet-node models --browse
```

---

## Start with the interactive wizard

```bash
# First run: wizard detects GPU, shows model list, saves config
.venv/bin/meshnet-node

# Subsequent runs: starts directly from saved config
.venv/bin/meshnet-node

# Re-run wizard even with saved config
.venv/bin/meshnet-node --reset-config
```

---

## Start the relay node (for NAT traversal)

```bash
.venv/bin/pip install -e packages/relay
.venv/bin/meshnet-relay --port 8765
```

Nodes behind NAT connect to the relay and advertise their relay address to the
tracker. See `docs/adr/0010-p2p-gossip-and-nat-relay.md`.

---

## Run all tests

```bash
.venv/bin/python -m pytest -q
```