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Remote running

Submit a simulation to a machine you own and stream the results back to your desktop. Nothing goes to a third-party cloud: the case runs on your hardware and the results land back in your project folder. Setting up the runner box is a separate walkthrough: Runner setup.

Remote running is a Pro feature. Founding accounts are Pro.

What it is

A runner is a machine you own that accepts RayRF jobs. When you run remotely, the case uploads to the runner, the solver runs there, telemetry streams back live, and the results download to your project folder.

Jobs move over a direct TLS 1.3 link with certificate pinning, straight from your desktop to the runner's address. The website never carries the case files, the results, or the session keys. It brokers discovery metadata only: a runner registers its reachable address and identity fingerprint under your account, and the desktop resolves that to connect directly.

Note
The link is pinned to the runner's key, not to a certificate authority. The first connection records the runner's fingerprint. If that key ever changes, the connection is refused rather than trusted silently.

The Remote runners manager

Open it from the Simulate tab with Configure remotes. The manager has a machines column on the left and a jobs column on the right. Selecting one or more machines lists their jobs, unioned across machines. Actions live on right-click menus.

Three buttons add a machine:

  • Add server connects by host and port. You confirm the runner's identity the first time you connect, then it is pinned.
  • Discover from account pulls in runners registered to your account and adds them with their address and attested fingerprint, so you do not type a host by hand. This needs a signed-in Pro account.
  • Use this computer as a runner closes the editor and opens a runner status window that serves jobs for your account from this machine. Quit that window and start RayRF again to return to editing.

Each machine card shows the runner's CPU, RAM, disk, and GPU, and a status dot: online, offline, or running. The address shows on hover.

Machines that stop answering leave the main list for a collapsed archive strip below it, ordered by when each was last seen. Click the strip to show or hide them. An archived machine returns to the main list on its own when it answers again, and right-click still offers Remove for entries that are gone for good.

Submitting a run

On the Simulate tab, check Run remotely and pick a runner from the selector below it. With the checkbox on and no runner selected, the run is blocked with a message rather than falling back to your local machine.

On submit, the case uploads to the runner, which queues and runs it. Only the solver-input files move: the geometry description and the port bitmasks. The license token is never sent over the wire. Telemetry streams back to the same progress panel a local run uses, so the S-parameters, Smith chart, and field previews update as the solve advances.

When the run finishes, the small results, the CSV and JSON tables, download automatically into the project's _sim_result folder, and the result tabs open as they do for a local run. Heavy artifacts are fetched on demand: the raw field frames, surface currents, and mesh geometry stay on the runner until you ask for them. The Radiation and Field Viewer tabs show a Download banner when a view needs an artifact that the automatic bundle skipped, and the jobs column lets you download any tier with its on-disk size shown.

Because the job lives on the runner's queue, closing the app detaches from it. The run keeps going, and you collect the results later from the manager.

Managing jobs

Right-click a job in the jobs column to download its results or cancel it while it is queued or running. Right-click a machine to refresh it, rename it, or clear its job history. Clearing keeps a job that is currently running and any job that finished in the last minute.

The runner's queue is durable. Jobs survive a runner restart, and a running job whose backend is interrupted by a restart or power loss is re-queued and run again from the start.

Identity and trust

Every runner has an identity fingerprint, printed when the box is set up. The first time you connect to a runner, the desktop shows that fingerprint and asks you to trust it. Compare it against the value the runner printed, accept, and the key is pinned for that machine. From then on the runner must present the same key. A changed key is refused, so a substituted runner cannot impersonate one you trusted.

Roles

The runner grants control by account. The owner account, which defaults to the account on the runner's license key, can submit, cancel, and clear jobs. Any other account connects view-only: it can watch jobs and download results, but cannot submit or control. Submitting also needs your own Pro entitlement on the connecting machine.

From the command line

The rayrf serve and rayrf remote verbs drive runners headless, for scripted submission and for agents. See the CLI reference for the full verb list and Runner setup for the box-side commands.