OptiQ Cloud

Boost hands one hard turn to a frontier model and gives control straight back. It lives inside optiq serve, so every client already pointed at your local server can use it without a plugin.

Connect a machine

Sign in once per machine. The browser approves the request; the token is written to your OptiQ config and never leaves the machine.

$ optiq cloud login

optiq cloud status shows the account, the Boosts remaining and the mode. optiq cloud logout revokes the token rather than only forgetting it, so a lost laptop cannot keep spending.

Restart optiq serve after signing in. It reads the token at startup and prints a line confirming Boost is enabled.

Asking for a Boost

Start a message with /boost:

/boost work out why this test passes locally and fails on CI

Some clients handle slash commands themselves and never send them to the server. Claude Code is one. Use the plain-text form there:

boost: work out why this test passes locally and fails on CI

The trigger word is stripped before the request reaches the cloud model, so it never appears in what the model reads.

Both runs below were given the same sentence. The local model read the file, ran the tests, grepped, then fetched a URL it had invented, and ran out of turns:

OptiQ Code running a task on the local model: it reads src/server.py, runs tests, searches, then fetches a URL that does not exist and gets an HTTP 429, before stopping at max_turns and offering a Boost. — The local model, stalling. The offer costs nothing.

With /boost in front, the same sentence goes to the cloud model, which reads both files and answers:

The same task prefixed with /boost. A line reads: boosted, this turn runs on the cloud model. It reads src/server.py and src/config.json and explains what listen_address() returns. — The same sentence, boosted.

What one Boost covers

A Boost is an episode, not an API call. A hard turn is rarely one question: the model reads files, runs commands and comes back several times before it answers. All of that is one Boost.

The episode is matched on the tool-call ids the cloud minted, which the protocol obliges your client to echo back. That survives a client compacting its history mid-episode, and it means the client never has to know an episode exists.

The episode ends on a reply with no tool call, on the per-episode cost ceiling, or on an error. The next message goes to your local model again. A Boost is one episode, never a mode.

An episode that produced nothing is refunded.

Modes

Mode	Behaviour
`manual`	Only a message that asks for a Boost gets one.
`suggest`	Offers a Boost after a turn that stalled. Never spends a credit on its own. The default.
`auto`	Retries a stalled turn on the cloud, once per request.

A turn counts as stalled when it used every turn without finishing, made the same tool call repeatedly, or ended on a run of failing calls. Length alone is not a signal: a large refactor takes many turns and succeeds.

In suggest, the stall is named and the decision is yours:

OptiQ Code in suggest mode. After the local model edits a file and stops at max_turns, a line reads: the local model used all 3 turns without finishing. Type /boost to retry this with the cloud model. — suggest names the signal it saw, then waits.

In auto, the same stall is retried without asking:

auto retries once, and says why it did.

Images

Screenshots are resized and recompressed before upload, because an image is worth about a thousand input tokens and full-resolution pixels buy nothing. A payload still too large after that is refused with an explanation rather than pushed at the request limit.

What leaves your machine

The messages in the one episode you Boosted, and nothing else. Ordinary turns never reach the network. Your repository is not uploaded, indexed or scanned, and prompts are not retained after the episode completes.

What is kept is token counts, timings and cost, so your dashboard can show what a Boost actually cost.

When a Boost cannot happen

The turn continues on your local model and the reply says why. You are not charged for a Boost that never reached the cloud. A request that provably never left the machine is retried once; a request that timed out is not, because it may already have been processed and billed.

Asking for a Boost on a machine that was never connected says so, and says what to run:

The OptiQ Code command list, including /boost, followed by the reply to a /boost request: not connected to OptiQ Cloud, run optiq cloud login (20 free Boosts), then restart optiq serve. — No account, no charge, no silent fallback.

Boosts and billing

Sign-up includes 20 Boosts. A pack is 200 Boosts for $20, bought when you want it rather than as a subscription. Auto top-up is optional and takes a monthly cap you set.

The dashboard

Your account lives at cloud.mlx-optiq.com. It shows four things and deliberately not much else:

Boost balance, and a button to buy 200 more for $20.
Connect a machine, with the optiq cloud login command to run.
Auto top-up, off by default. See below.
API tokens: one row per machine you have connected, showing the prefix, when it was last used, and a button to revoke it. Only the hash is stored, so a token is shown once and never again.

Auto top-up

A balance that runs out mid-task is the worst moment to discover it, so auto top-up buys another pack when you drop below a threshold you set.

Setting	Default	What it does
Enabled	off	Nothing is charged unless you turn it on.
Threshold	20 Boosts	Buys when the balance falls below this.
Pack	200 for $20	What each top-up purchases.
Monthly cap	yours to set	A hard ceiling. Once reached, top-ups stop until the month rolls.

The cap is the point. Automatic spending without one is how a runaway loop becomes a surprising invoice, so the cap is checked in the same statement that claims the top-up: several Boosts arriving at once cannot each start their own purchase.

Seeing what a Boost cost

Every episode records its token counts, how many cloud calls it took and how long it ran. OptiQ Code prints the same thing at the end of a run:

tokens: 21,480 in / 4,515 out = 25,995  ·  4,003 reasoning (89% of out)
  ·  local + 1 Boost  ·  14 left

Episodes are counted, not calls. A turn where the model read four files before answering is one Boost, and reads as one.

Accounts, keys and billing

Signing in, connecting a machine, how your coding agent gets the key (it does not), API tokens and auto top-up all live on Accounts and billing.

Per-client notes

See Integrations for setup of each supported client: Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent and Mistral Vibe.