The VM model

A machine is a KVM microVM with its own kernel, network stack, persistent disk, and public HTTPS domain. It’s reachable on the internet through the proxy: HTTPS by domain, SSH on a dedicated per-VM port.

Create

boxd machine new myapp

Argument / Flag	Default	Description
`NAME` (positional)	auto-generated	Machine name. Must be unique. Becomes the subdomain.
`--auto-suspend-timeout`	server default	Idle seconds before auto-suspend. `0` disables.
`--auto-hibernate-timeout`	server default	Idle seconds before cold auto-hibernate. `0` disables.

If you omit the name, boxd generates a random name like blue-river. Output:

creating myapp...
name: myapp
  id: 9645b1e8-193d-4d11-86b1-f91deff5bbfb
 url: myapp.boxd.sh
boot: 30ms
Connect via SSH: ssh myapp.boxd

Or from your browser: https://myapp.boxd.sh

With --json:

{
  "name": "myapp",
  "vm_id": "9645b1e8-193d-4d11-86b1-f91deff5bbfb",
  "url": "myapp.boxd.sh",
  "image": "default",
  "status": "running",
  "boot_time_ms": 30
}

List

boxd machine list

name    status   url                image
myapp   running  myapp.boxd.sh      default
test    running  test.boxd.sh       default

Returns no VMs if you have none.

Destroy

boxd machine remove myapp -y

destroyed myapp

The name (and its proxy + SSH port) are reserved — recreating a machine with the same name reuses them when possible.

What’s inside

The default image is Ubuntu 24.04 (unminimized, with man pages and full documentation): Languages and runtimes:

Python 3 with pip, uv package manager, and pipx
Go (golang-go)
build-essential (gcc, g++, make)

Coding agents:

Claude Code (claude) — Anthropic’s CLI coding agent
Codex (codex) — OpenAI’s CLI coding agent

Use them with a subscription (e.g., Claude Max) or by setting an API key inside your machine. Each machine includes an AGENTS.md at ~/.config/boxd/AGENTS.md that gives agents context about the boxd environment. It’s symlinked to ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md and ~/.codex/AGENTS.md automatically. Containers:

Docker and Docker Compose
Docker Buildx

Editors:

vim, neovim

Tools:

git, curl, wget, jq, ripgrep, sqlite3, rsync, tree, file, unzip
GitHub CLI (gh)

Monitoring:

btop, atop, iotop, ncdu

Media:

ffmpeg, ImageMagick

Network:

mitmproxy, socat, netcat
Headless Chrome (via headless-shell)

System:

nginx (configured on port 8000, disabled by default)
systemd (full init system)
openssh-server, openssh-client

Node.js 24 is installed via nvm and available in interactive shells (SSH, boxd connect). It is not on PATH for non-interactive boxd machine exec calls, which use /bin/sh -c and don’t source ~/.bashrc. To use Node from boxd machine exec, either source nvm first (. ~/.nvm/nvm.sh && node ...) or install it system-wide (sudo apt install -y nodejs npm).

The boxd user has passwordless sudo and is a member of the docker group.

Getting started

Cloud dev boxes

Preview environments

Agents on boxd

Organizations

Integrations

How it works

Reference

The VM model

Create

List

Destroy

What’s inside

​Create

​List

​Destroy

​What’s inside

Create

List

Destroy

What’s inside