Branch-office AI: workers that join the farm by being switched on

A gateway can discover its workers automatically over mDNS on the local network, with no static worker list to maintain ^[1]. Power on a prepared box whose fingerprint the gateway already trusts, it advertises itself, the gateway probes it, and within a health-check cycle it is serving. For a site without ops staff, plugging in a box that was prepared and listed in advance is the entire scaling procedure.

Roaming hardware contributes when present

A workstation that is only sometimes on can contribute when it is present, because discovery adds it while it advertises and drops it when it goes away ^[1]. Static lists and discovery compose: pin the core boxes statically for a stable base, and let extras join dynamically, with static entries winning on an identity collision.

The setup

Each worker serves the LAN as in the office recipe, which makes it advertise on mDNS automatically, and shares one farm key; the gateway enables discovery, lists each prepared box's certificate fingerprint, and carries that shared key for discovered workers ^[2]. An advertisement whose fingerprint is not on the list is ignored, so an unknown device on the network is never sent the farm key. A newly appeared worker is probed immediately rather than waiting a full cycle, and the gateway excludes an advertisement that is actually itself.

Where it fits, and where it doesn't

This suits branch, retail, and clinic sites with one gateway appliance and whatever capable machines exist, and lab or demo rooms where hardware comes and goes ^[1]. It is link-local by design, so it is not for cloud or routed networks; there you keep a static worker list. Image the boxes once, ship them, and plug them in.