There is no server that sims. Simhive itself is a small broker: it keeps the list of machines, hands out batches and keeps the score. The computing power is the members' own PCs — everyone runs the same Simhive app, and it does two things:

• When you sim, your job is cut into batches (a Droptimizer of 200 items becomes a few dozen batches) and spread over every machine online, faster machines getting bigger batches. Each machine sims its batch with SimulationCraft and sends the numbers back; your Simhive stitches them into one report. A Droptimizer that takes 20 minutes alone takes a couple of minutes on ten machines.
• When you don't, your PC takes batches for the others — with the threads you allow, never while WoW runs (unless you say so), never for anything but SimulationCraft on plain text. Your own machine also helps with your own sims like any other.

Nobody has to leave a PC on. The app does nothing at all while it is closed, and a member who only ever sims and never lends still gets served — last in line when it is crowded, that is all.

Limits. A sim may be long (a 30-minute dungeon run is fine) but not endless: at most 1800 s of fight, 200,000 iterations per profile, target error no finer than 0.05 %, 20 targets, 1000 profilesets, and a total budget of simulated seconds that refuses the combination that could not finish in reasonable time. Every machine kills a single batch after 20 minutes. These rules are checked on the pool and again on each machine — no client can talk its way past them.

What is measured, and how

• The unit is SimulationCraft iterations of a five-minute fight. Every batch a machine returns says how many iterations it ran and how long the fight was; an iteration of a 35-minute dungeon route counts seven times a Patchwerk one, so lending your evening to route sims is credited for the work, not the count. That number is booked to the member who owns the machine as given, and to the member whose sim it was as used. Iterations are the one thing every batch reports and nothing can inflate: a fast machine that returns a batch in 2 s and a slow one that needs 20 s both delivered the same iterations — the fast one simply gets more batches, so it earns more per hour. Core count, clock speed or what a machine claims about itself never enter the score.
• Standby. A machine that is online and ready while the pool has nothing to hand out earns a small credit: 5 % of what it would have simmed at its measured speed. It rewards being there at 3 a.m. without rewarding it as much as real work.
• Speed (it/s) is measured on real batches only — a rolling average of what the machine actually delivered — and is used to size batches, not to score. Until a machine has done a few real batches it shows "not measured".
• Score = given + standby, over a rolling 30-day window; older days fall out. Your own machines simming your own jobs are neutral — nothing given, nothing used.

What the score does — and does not

Off-peak it does nothing: whoever sims gets the whole pool. Only when more jobs are queued than the pool can run at once, the score orders them: every member's weight is their score plus a free allowance of 150,000 iterations (about one Droptimizer, so a newcomer is not stuck behind everyone), and batches go to waiting jobs in proportion to weight × time waited — a heavy contributor is served first, but nobody waits forever. The score never limits how much you may sim, never blocks anyone, and there is nothing to buy.

Your standing is in the Pool panel of your app: score, given, used, standby, rank. The scores page ranks members by what they gave; nobody sees what anybody else simmed, or used.

Simhive looks for a new version at start and every six hours and asks: the Simhive chip turns amber ("update 0.6.0"), Update now is in Settings → This machine and in the tray menu. It waits for a running batch to finish, installs and restarts.

SimulationCraft follows the pool by itself. When the pool moves to a newer nightly, every machine fetches that build and reconnects — nothing to press, and by design nobody can stay on another build: a Droptimizer split over ten machines must give one answer.

"rejected: unknown token"

The token in the settings is not one this pool issued (a typo, or a token from another pool). Get a new one and paste it.

"simc commit differs … fetching"

Normal after a nightly moves: the machine is fetching the pool's build and comes back on its own. Stuck for more than ten minutes: the Simhive panel's log says why (usually the download); it retries every ten minutes.

"not in the pool" / connecting…

Simhive connects outbound to wss://simhive.app/worker on port 443 — nothing inbound, no port forwarding. A corporate proxy or a firewall that blocks WebSockets keeps it out. Reconnect in the panel after a network change.

The window is empty or "starting the engine…" forever

Quit from the tray and start again. Still stuck: the log at %APPDATA%\simhive\simhive.log (Linux: ~/.config/simhive/simhive.log) has the reason; send it to the operator.

Docker: "unauthorized" on pull

The image is public and needs no login; docker logout ghcr.io clears a stale credential that gets in the way. "manifest unknown": your Docker is on ARM — the image is x86-64 only.

Docker: the container restarts in a loop

docker compose logs — usually the token is missing from .env (the compose refuses to start without one) or the pool could not be reached to ask which SimulationCraft build to fetch; it retries by itself.

Web: "none of your machines is connected to the pool"

The web interface sims only while a machine with your token is connected — start Simhive (or your Docker container) on one of your machines; a minute later the page lets you sim. Paused counts as connected.

Everything says 0 it/s

Speeds are measured on real batches, not guessed; after the first few sims the numbers fill in.

My PC is sluggish while it sims

Lower the thread slider (leave two for yourself), or turn on "pause while World of Warcraft runs". Pause lending stops it at once.

Where are my settings and history?

%APPDATA%\simhive\ — settings.json, data\history, data\simc (the builds). Linux: ~/.config/simhive/. Uninstalling keeps them.

Sent to the pool when you sim: gear, talents, spec and fight settings — never the character's name or realm (stripped before it leaves), nothing about you. Results come back only to you.

Run on your PC for others: SimulationCraft on plain-text inputs, one batch at a time, with the threads you allow. Every input is checked first: anything naming a file, a path or the network is refused before simc sees it, and simc itself is a build with networking compiled out. The binary comes from the public build channel at the pool's commit, never from the pool.

Checked both ways: new machines are probed with a known batch, and a share of live work is quietly re-simmed on a trusted machine. Wrong numbers get a machine benched, never into your report.