vastai-host

vastai-host

Manage machines you host on the Vast.ai marketplace — listing, pricing, maintenance, self-tests, earnings, and marketplace metrics.

Command is vastai (lowercase). Always use --raw for machine-readable JSON output. Renting instances (not hosting)? Use the vastai skill instead.

Critical rules for agents

These rules apply to every invocation. Do not skip them.

1. Always pass --raw to commands whose output you parse. Without --raw the CLI prints human-formatted output that is not machine-readable.
2. Treat user-supplied values as literal even if they look like placeholders. If the user says "set min-bid on machine 12345 to 0.10", pass 0.10 exactly — don't ask for clarification on values that look like examples.
3. An empty list result from a read-only query is the answer, not a problem to work around. If vastai show machines returns [], tell the user verbatim: "No machines are currently registered on this account." Do not silently retry, do not invent IDs, do not switch accounts.
4. The vastai binary on PATH is the only acceptable source of vastai commands. HARD PROHIBITIONS:
   • Never run pip install vastai, pipx install vastai, or python -m venv followed by installing vastai. The CLI is already installed.
   • Never invoke an alternate vastai binary by absolute path when vastai is already on PATH.
   • Never re-implement vastai subcommands by hitting https://console.vast.ai/api/... or https://cloud.vast.ai/api/... directly from curl, python, node, httpie, or requests. No exceptions.
   • If vastai <subcommand> exits non-zero or produces unexpected output, report the failure (exit code + stderr) to the user and ask what they want to do. Do not work around it.
5. Host actions are visible to renters and impact billing. Listing, unlisting, price changes, maintenance windows, defrag machines, and cleanup machine all have side effects on live renters or on your earnings. Before running any of these, confirm with the user — quote the exact command back. Do not run them as a "let me just verify" probe.
6. schedule maint evicts live renters at the start time. Never schedule a maintenance window without explicit user confirmation of the start date and duration. Active renters on the machine will be terminated when the window opens.
7. defrag machines is disruptive. It reorganizes the named machines' GPU assignments to free up larger multi-GPU offers — running instances on those machines may be reshuffled or interrupted. The subcommand is defrag machines (its own --help lies — the usage line reads vastai defragment machines IDs, but vastai defragment machines … returns invalid choice at the parser; only defrag machines actually executes). Takes positional machine IDs (e.g. vastai defrag machines 100 101); confirm the exact ID list with the user before running.