# Become a host

One host ID for your computers, an observed assessment and a 50% rental revenue share.

Status: Implemented enrollment and scoring · Physical client validation and payouts pending

## Apply on the website
Open the [host portal](/host/), create an account or sign in, and submit your name, country and assessment consent. The server assigns a stable numeric host ID. Applying does not subscribe you to marketing email.

Generate a private pairing code for each computer. It expires after 24 hours and can be used once. A new code replaces your unused code. **Your host ID identifies you; the private pairing code authorizes a machine to join your account.** Never share the code or copy an installed worker credential to another machine.

## USB or downloaded client
[Download the Windows client](/downloads/computeruse-worker-windows.zip), extract the folder, and run `Setup.cmd` on the host machine. You can also copy that extracted folder to a USB drive. Approve Windows administrator elevation and choose “I am applying to be a host.” Enter your host ID, then your pairing code. A missing or unknown ID leads to website signup.

The same installer offers company-password enrollment. The company password is verified against a server-side hash, and company ownership is approved immediately. The password is absent from the USB package. Ownership approval does not bypass actual desktop, licensing, isolation and cleanup checks.

The client registers a ComputerUse Worker scheduled task, protects its credential using Windows DPAPI and administrator/SYSTEM file permissions, and starts outbound reporting. It does not format disks, upload personal files or run arbitrary remote commands. Physical Windows verification is still pending for this release.

## Allow 24–48 hours for qualification
Please allow the client to run on the host machine for **48 hours** while we evaluate whether it qualifies. A preliminary report is available after 24 hours. Keep the computer powered, awake and connected; the installer does not change your power settings.

The dashboard records hardware, free disk space, server-observed heartbeat coverage, DNS and HTTPS connectivity, and approximate hourly download/upload/latency measurements to ComputerUse. The unmanaged switch cannot report individual port utilization. No customer workloads run during this assessment.

Allow up to approximately 144 MiB of probe traffic over 48 hours, plus telemetry. The small transfer tests measure the path to the service; they are not a certified ISP speed test. Hardware and bandwidth reports originate on the client and require independent verification before commercial activation.

## Qualification score
Version 1 uses visible rules: uptime contributes 45 points, connectivity 15, download 15, upload 15 and hardware 10. Target criteria are 99% heartbeat coverage, 99% successful connectivity checks, at least 24 hourly bandwidth samples across a 48-hour observation window, median 25 Mbps download, median 10 Mbps upload, median latency no more than 200 ms, supported RAM, at least four logical processors and 170 GiB free system disk.

Server receipt times and one sample per minute prevent duplicate heartbeat submissions from inflating uptime. Missing reports count against coverage. A preliminary score is not approval. **AI review is not configured yet**; the dashboard explicitly identifies the current method as transparent rules. These initial thresholds are product qualification targets and may change after real-machine benchmarking.

## 50/50 revenue split
The host receives 50% of the rental charges attributable to that host's computers, after discounts and adjusted for refunds and chargebacks. Separate taxes and unrelated add-ons are excluded. No platform-overhead deduction is applied to the host share. Fractional cents carry forward in the ledger. Accrued amounts are unpaid and require settlement reconciliation before transfer.

Eligible company computers are assigned before eligible partner computers within the requested tier. Existing active host rentals stay assigned to their machines. There is no guaranteed utilization or income.

## Stripe Connect
The implementation supports Stripe-hosted Express onboarding in test mode, authenticated host-account binding, signed account-update webhooks and reconciliation after an uncertain response. Identity and bank details go to Stripe. Returning from onboarding alone does not establish payout eligibility.

**Live Stripe Connect and automatic transfers are disabled.** Provider credentials, supported-country confirmation, settlement attribution, refund/chargeback handling and end-to-end payout verification remain required. Separate charges and transfers are the planned routing model for orders spread across several hosts. See [Stripe Connect onboarding](https://docs.stripe.com/connect/hosted-onboarding) and [separate charges and transfers](https://docs.stripe.com/connect/separate-charges-and-transfers).