How LPCX works

● What's a credit, and what's it worth?

A credit is pegged to one thing: brain work, measured in tokens. 1 credit = 1,000 tokens. That's it.

• Verifiable — the model reports the tokens it used; every ledger row recomputes as credits = ceil(tokens ÷ 1000). The ledger is append-only.
• Stable — it's pegged to real work, so it can't inflate. Not a speculative coin.
• Easy — one division. A kid can audit it.

New here? You start with 300 credits (300,000 tokens of free brain).

● What's an SOP, and why do I care?

An SOP — Standard Operating Procedure — is doing the same job the same way every time, with tight, consistent context. It's the difference between a 4-star and a 5-star result: consistency.

Here's the part that hits your wallet: every token you send is re-read by the brain on every step of its answer. A bloated 50,000-token prompt is re-read 50,000 times. A tight SOP-shaped prompt (~2,000 tokens) gets the same result for ~25× less. Sloppy, fat context burns your credits. Tight SOPs stretch them. The system rewards doing it right.

● Why do I pick a template instead of typing whatever I want?

Because templates are the SOPs — proven, tight, known-cost jobs: print a card, make a Locandina, curate a playlist, turn a 2D image into a 3D print. You pick from the catalog; you don't free-type a 10-page prompt. That keeps your costs low, your results consistent, and the platform safe. Got a new kind of job? Make your own SOP, refine it, and it becomes a template.

● "Wait your turn" — what's the queue?

The shared brain has a fixed number of slots. If they're all busy, your job waits in line, first-in-first-out — it isn't thrown away. If nobody's waiting, you go straight through. Ten people ahead of you? You're number eleven. Simple and fair.

● What's "BYO brain"?

Bring Your Own brain. If the shared brain is full — or you just want to use your own model endpoint — flip to BYO and point it at your endpoint. BYO jobs run off the shared quota and cost zero shared credits (you're on your own dime). It's the escape valve when the line is long.

● What's "Bring Your Own Hardware"?

A recipe runs on a machine — and that machine can be ours, or yours. Lend your computer to the square and jobs run on it. Your box reaches out to the square to pull work, runs it, and sends the result back — so nothing on your machine is exposed (no open ports, no inbound connections). Unplug anytime.

Setup is one step: register your machine, and it tells the square what it can do. From then on it quietly does work and earns you credits. Bring your own brain, bring your own hardware.

● What can my machine run?

Most recipes need just three small, free tools — and a normal laptop has room for all of them:

• Piper — turns text into a spoken voice.
• Puppeteer — turns designs into images, PDFs, and video frames.
• ffmpeg — mixes voice + visuals into video.

Together that's about 1 GB on disk and well under 1 GB of memory while running — a voiceover video takes ~2 seconds on a plain CPU. No graphics card needed for voice, captions, cards, print, or video. On the Provider Console, green badges show which tools your box has, and it tells you plainly what it runs and can't run. Heavy image / 3D recipes are the only ones that need a real GPU.

● I blew my credits. Now what?

You earn more. Lend your idle machine to the network, contribute skills, help a neighbour — credits come back through work, not a monthly ransom. No money required; the square balances itself. And next time, you'll use tighter SOPs. Fool me once…

● Can I bring my own software?

Two things you can swap freely: your brain (the AI model) and your hardware (the machine). One thing you can't: the software — because the software is the recipe, and the recipes are tested. That's the guarantee, not a limit.

• No surprises — we wrote and tested the steps, so we know what comes out.
• It protects the people who lend machines — your computer only ever runs vetted recipes, never a stranger's mystery code.

The menu still grows: new recipes get added after testing — like an app store, not sideloading. Every dish on the menu has been cooked and tasted first.