> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mifr.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# What a provider is

> An idle Apple Silicon Mac that runs open-weight models for Mifr callers.

A provider is an Apple Silicon Mac that runs open-weight models for Mifr callers. The work happens on that machine. Callers get a signed receipt for the hardware that produced the answer.

The Mac dials out to the coordinator. There is no inbound port, so a home machine behind NAT works. The coordinator is a directory. It never decrypts a prompt.

You do not grant yourself trust. The caller does. `hardware` comes from Apple's attestation of this Mac. `transparent` comes from the logged binary. Your process advertises at most `process`.

Your identity is a Secure Enclave key under your user account (`~/.mifr/sep.key`). That is why the provider runs as a LaunchAgent, not as a root daemon. A root process would be a different identity and would fail the posture check.

A provider serves one sealed session at a time. Concurrent load queues on the caller side.

If you want to call the hosted API instead, start in [Client](/authentication).