Today we are going public with the developer preview of exe.dev, a new VM hosting service. We will keep the service open for new users as long as our capacity lasts. Try it out with:

ssh exe.dev

As we built sketch.dev, we found ourselves needing more machines than ever before. Whether using an LLM as a typing assistant or a sophisticated debugger, we found we had a lot more little software we wanted to run. Running it turned out to be the hassle. So we built a platform for making it easy.

Notable features of exe.dev:

1. All the VMs that fit: your subscription gets you so much CPU and RAM. How your VMs share your resources is up to you. Want 20 idle VMs that answer an HTTP request every other day? Go for it.
2. Real VMs, sub-second start you get a full Ubuntu machine (or any other container image you decide to bring). Install Docker Compose if you like.
3. Persistent disks with some really interesting work coming soon.
4. SSH-based API get started by typing ssh exe.dev and creating a VM.
5. Private by default, share with discord-style links exe.dev takes care of TLS and auth for you. By default only you can reach your HTTP services, and you have easy mechanims to share them with friends and colleagues.
6. Agent-friendly sandbox start a VM, ssh in, and use any agent you like. Treat the VM as a sandbox for maximum agent effectiveness.

Over the next few weeks we are going to be writing about all of the technology behind this. Each element is a significant project, but we waited until we had the whole package ready to try because we believe together they are more than the sum of their parts. Persistent, private, fast-starting VMs with no marginal cost per-VM is what cloud computing should like, and it only becomes clear when you put all the pieces together.

You can explore the service right now with ssh exe.dev.