Skip to main content
The client utilities are a small background agent on your computer that lets your machines reach back to it: paste images from your clipboard into Claude Code, read files under your home directory, and start and drive the Chrome on your laptop - with your logins - from inside a machine.

​
Enable

They’re built into the boxd CLI from the Quickstart; there’s no separate download. They’re off by default. On each computer you want to reach:
You need to be logged in first (boxd auth login). Run it as yourself, not with sudo - the agent runs in your login session so it can reach your clipboard, browser and home directory. macOS and Linux are supported.
Turning the utilities off keeps a small background agent running in a reduced mode that only syncs your ~/.ssh/config entries; daemon.enable false removes it altogether.

​
Which machines can reach your computer

Your personal machines and private org-billed machines - the ones only you have a shell on. Shared org machines and isolated machines are refused, so a teammate on a shared box can never read your files or drive your browser. Every session you open with boxd connect or ssh <vm>.boxd is tied to the computer you opened it from. Sessions without that context - a cron job, a background automation, a console terminal - reach your most recently connected computer instead. Nothing else is needed; the bridge keeps working across reconnects.

​
Several computers

Enable the utilities on each one, and give them labels. Inside a machine:
The listing marks the most recently connected computer as the default. A session you opened from one of your computers (boxd connect, ssh <vm>.boxd) goes to that computer; anything else (cron, automations, the console terminal) goes to the marked default. Every boxd local command takes --device <label|id|prefix> to target a specific computer; an explicit choice is strict and never falls back to a different one, and an ambiguous prefix is refused. Agents on the machine are told to run boxd local devices first and to ask which computer when there’s more than one.

​
Clipboard and image pasting

With the utilities enabled, pasting into Claude Code inside a machine - including images - pulls from your computer’s clipboard. Screenshots, diagrams and mockups go straight into the conversation with no file transfer.

​
Reading local files

Access is read-only and limited to files under your home directory; anything outside it is refused. Files up to 100 MiB can be read. All commands except read accept --json.

​
Browser

Start and control a Chrome on your computer from a machine. The browser runs on your screen and your network, in a dedicated profile boxd keeps for it, separate from your everyday Chrome. It starts empty; log in once and it stays logged in.
Chrome or Chromium must be installed on the computer. One instance runs at a time - open while it’s running returns the existing one. Its profile lives in ~/.boxd/browser-sessions/default/ on your computer, so cookies and logins persist across open/close.

​
Driving it

boxd local browser cdp-url prints a Chrome DevTools Protocol endpoint that any CDP client inside the machine can use: the pre-installed agent-browser (agent-browser --cdp "$(boxd local browser cdp-url)"), Playwright, Puppeteer, or the chrome-devtools MCP that coding agents get automatically. In an automation, boxd.local.device().browser.connect() hands you a Playwright Browser. Examples, and how this compares with the machine’s own browser, are in Launch a Browser.

​
Errors you might see

  • no devices connected - on your computer, run boxd config set client-utils.enable true - nothing is enabled, or the agent on your computer isn’t running.
  • can’t reach your computer from this VM - the boxd client daemon isn’t connected - re-run the enable command on your computer.
  • this feature requires an updated boxd client on your computer - the agent is older than the machine expects; update the CLI.
  • client utilities are not available on org-shared VMs / … isolated VMs - by design; fork the shared machine to get a private copy.

​
Updating

Re-run the install command to upgrade the boxd CLI in place. The next time you run boxd, the agent restarts on the new version.