Deploy Windows

deploy-windows

Use this when standing up mesh-llm on Windows. Counterpart to deploy-macos and deploy-linux-gpu. Same single-binary embedded-runtime architecture; the binary is mesh-llm.exe and release archives are .zip (mesh-llm-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc[-<flavor>].zip).

Related skills/docs:

• mesh-join — creating/joining meshes (tokens, NAT, multi-node)
• connect-agents — pointing Goose/Claude Code/OpenCode/Pi at a running mesh
• docs/USAGE.md — install details; docs/CLI.md — full command reference
• contrib/windows/README.md — local PowerShell helper scripts

The one rule that matters most

mesh-llm resolves and downloads the model itself. Pass --model <ref> and it fetches the GGUF on first use. Do NOT pre-download with hf CLI tools. (Only --gguf takes a local file path you manage yourself.)

Install (PowerShell)

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Mesh-LLM/mesh-llm/main/install.ps1 | iex

Force a flavor non-interactively:

$env:MESH_LLM_INSTALL_FLAVOR = "vulkan"
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Mesh-LLM/mesh-llm/main/install.ps1 | iex

Facts:

• Flavors: cuda-blackwell, cuda, rocm, vulkan, cpu. No Metal on Windows. The installer probes nvidia-smi (incl. compute capability for Blackwell), ROCm tooling, and vulkaninfo, then recommends; when input/output is redirected (scripted/SSH) it takes the recommendation without prompting.
• Installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\mesh-llm\bin (override: -InstallDir / MESH_LLM_INSTALL_DIR) and prepends it to the user Path unless -NoPathUpdate. Open a new shell, or use the full path, after install.
• CUDA bundles ship their CUDA DLLs alongside mesh-llm.exe — no system CUDA toolkit install is required to run.
• Other knobs: -PreRelease / MESH_LLM_INSTALL_PRERELEASE=1, MESH_LLM_REQUIRE_CHECKSUM=1 (makes a missing .sha256 sidecar fatal; default is warn-and-continue).

irm | iex gotchas (learned the hard way — PR #828)

• A missing checksum sidecar on older releases warns and continues; that is expected, not a failure.
• On Windows PowerShell 5.1, network errors during sidecar download can surface as vague response-less WebExceptions rather than clean 404s. The installer handles this; if you're debugging a fork/older script, know that iex also breaks [ValidateSet] params (param init to "" fails validation before the script body runs). When irm | iex misbehaves, fall back to downloading the script and running it as a file: irm <url> -OutFile install.ps1; .\install.ps1 -Flavor vulkan.

Build from source (dev)

From a repo checkout (needs Rust, CMake + MSVC, Node, just):

just build                 # auto-detects cuda / rocm / vulkan / cpu
just build backend=vulkan  # override backend

Output: target\release\mesh-llm.exe (for just release-build) or target\debug\ for just build. Windows release archives use the dedicated release-build-*-windows / release-bundle-*-windows recipes. On native Windows, just check-release skips the Bash-only parity checks.

Launch

mesh-llm serve --model unsloth/Qwen3.6-27B-GGUF:UD-Q4_K_XL --auto

• Same surface as other platforms: --auto joins the public mesh; bare serve --model creates a private mesh and prints an invite token (see mesh-join). API on :9337, console on :3131.
• Pin a specific GPU with --device (e.g. --device Vulkan1, --device cuda:0); list devices with mesh-llm gpus.
• There is no service install on Windows (no launchd/systemd equivalent in install.ps1). Run it in a terminal, or wrap it yourself (Task Scheduler / NSSM) — startup models go in %USERPROFILE%\.mesh-llm\config.toml and bare mesh-llm serve reads them.

Repo helper scripts (dev checkouts)

contrib\windows\ wraps a local build (falls back to mesh-llm on Path):

.\contrib\windows\StartMeshServer.ps1 -Model Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct-Q4_K_M -Device Vulkan1
.\contrib\windows\StartChat.ps1 -Model Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct-Q4_K_M
.\contrib\windows\CollectSplitDiagnostics.ps1 -Model <ref> -ConsoleUrls http://127.0.0.1:3131 -ApiUrls http://127.0.0.1:9337/v1

The diagnostics collector attaches to running nodes and zips redacted API payloads, GPU/process facts, and skippy-native.log tails — useful when filing split/runtime issues from a Windows box.

Verify

mesh-llm --version
curl.exe -s http://localhost:9337/v1/models
curl.exe -s http://localhost:3131/api/status
curl.exe -s http://localhost:9337/v1/chat/completions -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"model":"auto","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"hi"}],"max_tokens":16}'

Use curl.exe explicitly — bare curl in PowerShell aliases to Invoke-WebRequest with different argument semantics. Model load takes time; poll /v1/models before concluding failure.

Logs, state, stop

• Runtime/instance state: %USERPROFILE%\.mesh-llm\runtime\<pid>\ — embedded native logs at logs\skippy-native.log.
• Config: %USERPROFILE%\.mesh-llm\config.toml; identity: .mesh-llm\key.
• Stop: mesh-llm stop (preferred). Emergency: use the PID for the specific instance being validated: Stop-Process -Id <mesh-llm-pid> -Force.

Troubleshooting