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smol machines

Fast, isolated Linux microVMs that run identically on your laptop, in smol cloud, or self-

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smol machines provides hardware-isolated Linux microVMs that run workloads in a dedicated virtual machine with its own kernel, rather than sharing a kernel with other processes. This solves the problem of running untrusted code, isolating environments for reinforcement learning rollouts, or maintaining persistent workloads that need to be secure and consistent across different environments. The same .smolmachine artifact runs identically on a developer's laptop, in the hosted cloud, or on self-managed servers.

The platform uses libkrun as its virtual machine monitor, with no host daemon, and supports macOS Hypervisor, Linux KVM, and Windows Hypervisor Platform. Key capabilities include elastic memory via virtio balloon, forking running machines into batches of episodes, configurable network policies, and persistent files and installed packages across sessions. The REST API and SDK allow programmatic control, and machines can be created from pre-built registry images or custom .smolmachine files.

The product is aimed at developers and teams needing secure, portable VM isolation for workloads like sandboxing untrusted code, running persistent agents, or managing reinforcement learning environments. New accounts receive $100 of free credit. Pricing is usage-based: a base fee per machine-hour running, plus consumption charges for active vCPU, active RSS memory, disk used, and network egress. Plans range from a free tier with 20 machines and 16 GB memory per machine, to pro and startup plans with higher limits and monthly fees, and an enterprise plan with custom limits, dedicated nodes, and SSO.

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