Fast, isolated Linux VMs — the same smol machine on your laptop, in the cloud, or self-hosted.

about

Run any workload in a fast, hardware-isolated Linux VM. The same SDK and the same .smolmachine artifact run identically:

• locally — native macOS, Linux, or Windows through the open-source runtime.
• in smol cloud — deploy with one call.
• self-hosted — on your own servers.

Develop locally, then deploy to the hosted cloud — or self-host with smolvm.

get started

export SMOL_CLOUD_TOKEN="smk_your_key_here"
export SMOL_CLOUD_URL="https://api.smolmachines.com"

curl -X POST $SMOL_CLOUD_URL/v1/machines \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SMOL_CLOUD_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "source": {"type": "image", "reference": "alpine"},
    "resources": {"cpus": 1, "memoryMb": 256},
    "name": "my-first-machine",
    "network": {"mode": "open"}
  }'

# the machine starts on the first exec
curl -X POST $SMOL_CLOUD_URL/v1/machines/MACHINE_ID/exec \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SMOL_CLOUD_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"command": "echo hello from smol cloud"}'

how it works

Each workload receives hardware isolation, with its own kernel on MacOS Hypervisor, Linux KVM, or Windows Hypervisor Platform. Pack it into a .smolmachine and it runs anywhere with compatible host architecture.

Default provision: 4 vCPUs 8 GiB RAM
Memory is elastic via virtio balloon, the host only commits what the guest actually uses. libkrun VMM + custom libkrunfw kernel. No host daemon — the VMM is linked into the binary.

use this for

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