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cave-vm is an open-source microVM runtime for Apple Silicon Macs, built for coding agents. Every project directory gets its own Linux VM (default Debian), and you can snapshot, restore and fork that whole running machine, memory and processes included, in tens of milliseconds.
I built this because even if agents are smart enough not to do destructive commands, they can still ruin the project like deleting project files, botched migrations, etc. The VM can be snapshotted, rolled back, and forked.
Claude Code and Codex CLI have built-in launchers that run them inside the VM in bypass-permissions mode. I chose this because frontier models nowadays rarely execute (but sometimes still do) bad commands that put your personal files at risk. The Linux VM also add an additional safety layer/sandbox for your agent. Files live inside the VM by default. If you want a copy of the files, you can do so in cave.toml and push the code to the VM via cave push. Any other agent or tool works through cave shell or cave exec, and there's an MCP server (exec, snapshot, restore, fork) if you want the agent on your Mac.
It's a VMM written in Rust directly on Hypervisor.framework, inspired by AWS’ Firecracker, with a minimal virtio device model, direct kernel boot and copy-on-write snapshots. I deliberately didn't use Virtualization.framework, because its memory save/restore is too slow for this. A daemon supervises one VMM process per VM, and a small guest agent handles exec, shells, files and port forwarding over vsock.
Coding agents wrote a lot of cave under my review (thank you Opus 5.5) but the concept, choice, and direction are all by me. I’d love feedback, especially on what breaks on your machine and what you think we should add!
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About cave-vm on Product Hunt
“A fast, lightweight Linux VM for every project”
cave-vm was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 0 upvotes and 1 comments, placing #241 on the daily leaderboard. cave-vm is an open-source microVM runtime for Apple Silicon Macs, built for coding agents. Every project directory gets its own Linux VM (default Debian), and you can snapshot, restore and fork that whole running machine, memory and processes included, in tens of milliseconds.
cave-vm was featured in Open Source (69k followers), Developer Tools (521.5k followers), Artificial Intelligence (481.6k followers) and GitHub (41.4k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 269.5k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted cave-vm?
cave-vm was hunted by rllingho. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
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rllingho