Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines

smolvm

Ship and run software with isolation by default.

This is a CLI tool that lets you:

Manage and run custom Linux virtual machines locally with: sub-second cold start, cross-platform (macOS, Linux), elastic memory usage. Pack a stateful virtual machine into a single file (.smolmachine) to rehydrate on any supported platform.

Install

# install (macOS + Linux) curl -sSL https://smolmachines.com/install.sh | bash # for coding agents — install + discover all commands curl -sSL https://smolmachines.com/install.sh | bash && smolvm --help

Or download from GitHub Releases.

Quick Start

# run a command in an ephemeral VM (cleaned up after exit) smolvm machine run --net --image alpine -- sh -c " echo 'Hello world from a microVM' && uname -a " # interactive shell smolvm machine run --net -it --image alpine -- /bin/sh # inside the VM: apk add sl && sl && exit

Use This For

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