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1068 readable replies · Supporting reply 1 · Supporting reply 2 · Supporting reply 3 · Supporting reply 4smol-machines
smolvm
Rust2026–2026
smol-machines / smolvm
smolvm
An embeddable, portable, branchable virtual machine to safely run Agents locally.
10Distinct people
43Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
7.1KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
An embeddable, portable, branchable virtual machine to safely run Agents locally.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month43 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2026-01-26 15:01:34 UTC to 2026-10-23 08:47:49 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 2026 | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Feb 2026 | 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Mar 2026 | 2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Apr 2026 | 2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 1 | 6 |
| May 2026 | 2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Jun 2026 | 2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| Jul 2026 | 2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| Aug 2026 | 2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| Sep 2026 | 2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Oct 2026 | 2026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
What Hacker News says
43 sourcesBIbinsquare·Oct 23, 2026
smol machines: https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm
slim, fast, microvm that runs on every platform.
disclaimer: am author
In OpenShell – A safe, private runtime for fleets of autonomous AI agentsUse smolvm, support for tailscale in each VM.
https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm
In Launch HN: Agent37 (YC F26) – Low-cost agent sandboxes for running agentshey simon,
smol machines actually support exactly those things across macs,linux, windows btw: https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm/blob/main/AGENTS.md#...
here's a snippet of how it looks like to configure that:
[network]
allow_hosts = ["api.github.com"] # hostname, also allows its subdomains
allow_host_patterns = ["example.com", "*.npmjs.org"] # exact names, or *. for subdomains only
allow_cidrs = ["10.0.0.0/8", "1.1.1.1"] # IP ranges or single IPs
[[network.credentials]]
name = "github"
environment_variable = "GITHUB_TOKEN"
In MXC - a sandboxed code execution systemI'm going to toss in smolvm as well because firecracker needs some expertise to make the box usable and secure.
https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm
In Linux containers in 500 lines of code (2016)It depends on your threat model but I think it's a good reminder either way. I recently discovered SmolVM <https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm> and it looks like a pretty good sweet spot for usability and isolation. There are so many sandboxing technologies to pick from and understand.
I've been using (rootless) Podman which gives me some basic assurances that it will stay in its designated directory and not run tools on my system directly but I have no limits on the network and with an internal UID/GID of 0:0 I have not done myself any favours. This is the same level of protection one would implement to keep a poorly written bash script from wreaking havoc and that's about it.
In Show HN: Pi pod – Run your pi coding agent in sandboxes on your own serverAt first, I had thought what is its point, but this post made me wonder about the fact that I myself don't use sandboxes (even though I very much think that they are a good option and recommend it to other people!)
I tried to use smolvm[0] on macOS and although its really great but then it was still a bit of an hassle to install maki.sh and It wasn't an entirely smooth sailing process in the start and I can see why there is some initial friction to it.
So I am gonna try it out as well and I think that this might be damn effective at what its trying to solve (simplifying sandboxing to be the norm rather than the exception)
For example. Even within Smolvm, I had to install maki (debug the issues in installing that as there were some errors), setup my api key in that, install gh, login to gh to finally have a working sandbox that can have my
Read the rest
environment and I imagine that moving files from VM to host and vice versa is a tad-bit complicated without compromising on security (I think that I just create a private github repo for this purpose if its a coding project, which also helps in actually cataloging all the projects for myself as well!)
and in some way, I think that this can act as the bridge course between sandboxing as well, I mean, I have finally introduced sandboxing on my local machine (although for sometimes, I just treat my vps machines as sandbox but nonetheless there are times when I just run maki on my local machine and I think that even with smolvm I might still have this), I definitely see the point of it.
I haven't really tried it yet as it made me go rather on the smolvm side of things but hopefully going to try out this
This seems like a project and I have starred the repo, good day!
[0]: https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm
That seems off to me as well.
Fwiw, you can run this instead free and open source: https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm
Disclaimer: Am author.
In 5x faster Edge Functions: V8 isolates to Firecracker MicroVMsI work on making this a reality with an embeddable VM.
Performance doesn't have to be supbar, infact with the right properties and focus on being lightweight - I see 90% of native performance.
I work on this as context: https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm
In CVE-2025-13032: Entering and Breaking the Avast Antivirus Sandbox Part 2I'm building smol machines, a new sandboxing primitive that works locally/remotely to introduce "branchable compute".
It's an idea I had to basically makes it possible to checkpoint, branch, rollback the entire vm kind of like git but on the entire computer.
https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm
In Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)happy to learn
Today I learn through GPU MODE & their discord: https://www.gpumode.com/events
I've only built toy kernels to experiment with supporting remoting CUDA workloads on smolvm: https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm/blob/6dcb182d7fbc9f5...
In GPU Offload in Rust: Portable, Safe, and Fastmaintainer, I would recommend trying out: https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm
It has network filtering + placeholders for secrets.
OSS, no logins needed
In Docker Sandboxes – Disposable, isolated sandboxes for AI agentsI build a OSS lightweight, portable VM for those that don't want lock ins: https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm
In Docker Sandboxes – Disposable, isolated sandboxes for AI agentsA lightweight ,portable virtual machine that simplifies/replaces need for containers.
https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm
In Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)I also have a light weight cross platform virtual machine with egress filtering if you're looking for an even more batteries included approach.
https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm
In Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guideYou can even go a step further and run the container in a VM, such as with Docker Sandbox or the krun runtime in Podman.
There's also smolvm which is a nice minimal microvm manager based on libkrun: https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm. I vibe coded a little shell utility for building and running OCI images for the Pi harness using it (easy enough to do manually, but the automation just makes it a couple quick commands rather than digging through documentation): https://github.com/neuroblaze/smol-pi
In Grok CLI uploaded the whole home directory to GCSShowing the 15 most recent of 43 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.