Smol machines is a CLI tool enabling subsecond cold-start virtual machines with hardware-isolated execution, cross-platform support (macOS, Linux), and portable VM serialization. Workloads can be packaged as .smolmachine files with dependencies pre-baked, booting in <200ms with no runtime downloads. Features include sandboxed code execution with network off by default, SSH agent forwarding, declarative Smolfile configuration, and elastic memory management via virtio balloon.
Infrastructure
Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines
A new CLI tool achieves <200ms VM cold-starts with hardware isolation and portable serialization, potentially enabling faster serverless and edge computing patterns without runtime overhead.
Friday, April 17, 2026 12:00 PM UTC2 MIN READSOURCE: Hacker NewsBY sys://pipeline
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infrastructure