1. Check your node¶
Before building anything, confirm the machine is actually there and available. Thirty seconds now saves you a confusing failure in step 4.
What "Agent Mode" means¶
Your node already had an operating system on it. Someone installed the Palette agent onto that existing OS, and the agent phoned home and registered the machine. That is Agent Mode: Palette manages a machine you already own, rather than wiping and re-imaging it.
The practical consequence for you: the OS layer of your profile does nothing. You will still add it — Palette requires one — but you will set it to a preset called Agent Mode that means "the OS is already handled, leave it alone."
Find the node¶
- Log in to Palette: https://console.spectrocloud.com
- Top-left, open the project dropdown and choose SA-Craig-Smith. Everything in Palette is scoped to a project — in the wrong project, your node is invisible.
- Left-hand menu → Clusters.
- Click the Edge Hosts tab along the top.
What good looks like¶
You should see one entry:
| Field | Expected value |
|---|---|
| Name | edge-06396f804bc511eb80001ceec94be53d |
| Health | Healthy |
| Status | Ready |
| Cluster | empty — the node is not in use |
The long edge-0639... name is normal. It is derived from the machine's hardware ID, not
something anyone typed. It has no friendly label, which is why you have to match on the ID.
There is more than one unclaimed host — pick the right one
This project contains three hosts that are not in a cluster. Only one of them is yours:
| Host | Use it? |
|---|---|
edge-06396f804bc511eb80001ceec94be53d |
Yes — healthy, registered 21 Aug |
edge-3931375034364d32324432393030514c |
No — unhealthy, left over from March |
dumnmy |
No — an unpaired test entry |
The four node1–node4 hosts are a Raspberry Pi cluster that is already in use and will not
appear as selectable. Copy the ID above rather than picking from the list by eye — the first
few characters differ only slightly.
The Cluster column must be empty
If a cluster name appears there, this node is already in use and cannot be claimed by a second cluster. Stop and ask Craig before continuing.
Health says Unhealthy?
That usually means the machine is powered off or has lost its network path back to Palette. It is not something you can fix from the Palette UI — flag it rather than working around it.
Once you see Healthy / Ready / no cluster, move on.