# Inference Cooperative

**Private AI, governed together.**

The Inference Cooperative is a member-governed project providing private AI inference. We are fiscally sponsored by [Metagov](https://metagov.org), a nonprofit, and funded through our [Open Collective](https://opencollective.com/inference-cooperative).

- **Website:** https://inference.coop
- **AI Chat:** https://chat.inference.coop
- **Open Collective:** https://opencollective.com/inference-cooperative
- **Contact:** info@inference.coop

## The model

The Inference Cooperative is a **member-governed** AI inference utility. Members contribute on a sliding scale (currently $10–20/month) and, in return, get access to private AI inference through a shared, cooperatively governed infrastructure.

Because we are legally under a nonprofit—[Metagov](https://metagov.org/) is our fiscal sponsor—we are member-governed rather than member-owned: members direct the project through governance, while the nonprofit holds the legal and financial structure.

### Membership

- **Sliding scale dues:** $10–20/month
- **Access:** private AI inference through the cooperative's gateway
- **Governance:** members participate in decisions about models, priorities, and direction

## The stack

The Inference Cooperative runs a self-hosted stack on [Cloudron](https://cloudron.io), with all inference routed through a single gateway to cloud-based LLM providers.

### Components

| Component | Purpose | URL |
|-----------|---------|-----|
| **Open WebUI** | Member-facing chat interface (with web search) | chat.inference.coop |
| **LiteLLM** | AI gateway — keys, metering, model routing | gateway.inference.coop |
| **Member Portal** | Membership middleware — onboarding, key provisioning, Loomio sync | portal.inference.coop |
| **SearXNG** | Self-hosted web search (feeds the chat's search tool) | search.inference.coop |
| **Gitea** | Git hosting (code + docs) | git.inference.coop |
| **Loomio** | Member governance | forum.inference.coop |
| **Open Collective** | Membership billing + fiscal sponsorship | opencollective.com/inference-cooperative |

The cooperative's software is open source and lives in the [`code`](https://git.inference.coop/code) organization on our Gitea instance.

### Models

The gateway currently exposes two models:

- **DeepSeek V4 Flash** — default model, best for agentic tasks
- **GPT-OSS 120B** — lightweight fallback

### Features

- **Web search** — enabled by default, backed by a self-hosted SearXNG instance (no external search API or scraper key required).
- **File uploads (RAG)** — works out of the box via Open WebUI's bundled local embedding model (`sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2`), no external embedding API.

### Privacy

Privacy is a core value. The current LLM backend (Ollama Cloud) is a policy-based privacy model. The roadmap is to move to [TEE-protected inference (via Tinfoil)](https://tinfoil.sh/inference), which provides architectural—not just policy—privacy guarantees.


## Governance

Members govern the project through [Loomio](https://www.loomio.com) and the Open Collective. See the [Charter](charter.md) for the cooperative's values, membership terms, and governance structure.

During the pilot phase, Nathan Schneider serves as Managing Director and has sole final discretion on decisions. 

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*This documentation lives in a public git repository. Contributions welcome.*