Smol machines
lastmod 2026-04-20created 2026-04-201 edits
Portable virtual machines with sub-second cold starts
About
- smolvm is a CLI-based virtual machine management tool for macOS and Linux that runs software in isolated environments
- Supports sub-second cold starts, elastic memory management, and single-file portability for fast, lightweight VMs
- VMs run as Linux kernel-based microVMs and can be packaged as .smolmachine files to rerun without dependencies
- Provides integrated support for development and security environments through hypervisor-boundary isolation, SSH agent forwarding, and Smolfile-based environment declarations
- Supports booting OCI images without a Docker daemon, offering a lightweight virtualization alternative with boot times under 200ms and hardware-level isolation