The author connects a 16 GB Mac Mini to a 64 GB MacBook Pro using LM Studio Link’s encrypted mesh VPN, offloading heavy model inference to the more powerful machine without exposing ports or tweaking firewalls. This setup lets you run large LLMs on low-RAM devices as if they were local, with no cloud or API key hassles.

• LM Studio Link uses Tailscale's WireGuard mesh VPN to let a 16GB Mac Mini offload inference to a 64GB M4 Max MacBook Pro with zero port forwarding or firewall config
• Remote inference performance is essentially native: 87 tokens/sec on GPT-OSS 20B, with a 1,139-token answer generated in half a second
• Free tier supports two users and up to ten devices, enabling use cases like thin-client Raspberry Pi setups or small teams sharing one powerful machine
• Main tradeoffs are unchanged initial model load times and total loss of access if the host machine goes offline