Run a Private Fleet

A private fleet is the set of machines you own, run as your own network — and on B3IQ it is the default, not a toggle. Serving is always own-nodes-strict: your gateway keys route only to machines your account owns, and B3IQ never routes an outside caller onto your hardware. There is nothing to switch on to make your fleet private.

What you do choose, per machine, is its mode:

Flip the mode from the machine's detail page in the dashboard. A machine in Earn mode is out of your serving pool entirely — flip it back to Bare metal to reclaim it. Earning is an explicit per-machine choice, never something that happens to an idle machine on its own.

"Private" Means Different Things

Assemble the Fleet

Call Your Fleet

Store the key in a locked-down file and point two environment variables at it.

bash
umask 077printf '%s\n' 'b3iq_gateway_...' > "$HOME/.b3iq/fleet-key"chmod 600 "$HOME/.b3iq/fleet-key"export B3IQ_GATEWAY_BASE_URL="https://b3iq.org/v1/api"export B3IQ_FLEET_KEY_FILE="$HOME/.b3iq/fleet-key"

bash
: "${B3IQ_GATEWAY_BASE_URL:?set B3IQ_GATEWAY_BASE_URL}": "${B3IQ_FLEET_KEY_FILE:?set B3IQ_FLEET_KEY_FILE}"cfg="$(mktemp)"chmod 600 "$cfg"trap 'rm -f "$cfg"' EXIT{  printf 'url = "%s/chat/completions"\n' "${B3IQ_GATEWAY_BASE_URL%/}"  printf 'request = "POST"\n'  printf 'header = "Authorization: Bearer %s"\n' "$(sed -n '1p' "$B3IQ_FLEET_KEY_FILE")"  printf 'header = "Content-Type: application/json"\n'} > "$cfg"# --dump-header surfaces X-B3IQ-Router-Node-ID so you can see which of your machines served.curl --fail --silent --show-error --dump-header - --config "$cfg" --data-binary @- <<'JSON'{  "model": "qwen3-8b",  "messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Say hello from my private fleet." }],  "max_tokens": 64}JSON

javascript
import { readFileSync } from "node:fs";const baseURL = process.env.B3IQ_GATEWAY_BASE_URL;const token = readFileSync(process.env.B3IQ_FLEET_KEY_FILE, "utf8").trim();const response = await fetch(`${baseURL}/chat/completions`, {  method: "POST",  headers: {    authorization: `Bearer ${token}`,    "content-type": "application/json"  },  body: JSON.stringify({    model: "qwen3-8b",    messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Say hello from my private fleet." }],    max_tokens: 64  })});// Which of your machines served the request.console.log("served by", response.headers.get("x-b3iq-router-node-id"));console.log(await response.json());

Inference on hardware you own is free — a fleet request records no charge. Confirm it landed on one of your own machines by reading X-B3IQ-Router-Node-ID, rather than by looking for a receipt.

Reach Your Machines

Day-to-day fleet operations don't need a browser:

• Fleet SSH keys — add a public key once under Settings → SSH keys and it is installed on every machine you own, kept in sync automatically; remove it to revoke access everywhere. Per-machine keys, a browser terminal, and a native SSH lane (plain ssh/scp/rsync) live on each machine's detail page. SSH is unavailable while a machine is in Earn mode.
• The b3iq CLI (npm i -g @b3dotfun/b3iq-cli) — b3iq login, b3iq machines list, b3iq ssh <machine>, b3iq models install <model> --machine <m>, b3iq logs --follow. See b3iq CLI.

Blend Models Across Your Fleet

A gateway key can also run a Mixture of Experts: attach b3iq.mixture to the same request and the fan-out runs across the machines you own — still free. Each expert model needs to be installed on at least one of your machines, and the request must not pin a machine (a mixture spreads across the fleet by policy, so a pin returns a 400).

Ownership Is Re-Verified

Common Blockers

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