Show HN: Clawk – Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop

A coding agent is only useful when you let it actually do things: install packages, run the code it writes, start servers, use the network. On your own machine that leaves two bad options. You approve every command (and babysit a prompt every few seconds), or you run --dangerously-skip-permissions and hope nothing important is one rm -rf or one leaked token away.

clawk is a third option. cd into a repo, type clawk, and Claude Code (or Codex, or a shell) is working inside a disposable Linux VM (your code mounted in, root in the guest, no permission prompts) while your files, your keychain, and the rest of your machine stay out of reach. The agent gets its own machine instead of yours.

_{One command to a working agent; an attempt to send data to an unknown server, blocked by the network allow-list; clawk attach resumes the session later.}

The boundary isn't a rule in a prompt the agent could be talked out of. It's a separate machine, and the only openings are the ones you mounted. From a shell inside a sandbox:

$ curl https://tracker.evil.example   # not on the allow-list: blocked
curl: (7) Failed to connect to tracker.evil.example port 443 after 2 ms: Connection refused

$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa                   # your keys never entered the VM
cat: /home/agent/.ssh/id_rsa: No such file or directory

$ git push                            # ...yet this works: ssh-agent is forwarded
Enumerating objects: 5, done.

To be honest about the limits, the allow-list blocks connections to unknown servers, not to ones you've allowed: github.com is pre-allowed and the forwarded ssh-agent can push, so treat anything the agent can read as something it could publish. The security model spells this out.

And if the agent wrecks the VM, run clawk destroy && clawk: a fresh VM, same repo, and --resume restores the conversation.

Highlights

• Let the agent do anything. It runs in a disposable VM with a restricted network, so rm -rf, package installs, and untrusted code can't reach your host, your files, or anything you didn't explicitly share.
• Working in one command. cd into a repo and run clawk. No Dockerfile, devcontainer, or setup file. First boot builds a rootfs from your image; every boot after takes seconds.
• Break it without losing anything. Destroy and recreate freely; your code and the agent's conversations live on the host. Only the disposable VM disk is lost.
• A real Linux box, your toolchain. Any OCI image is the rootfs: a full OS with exactly the tools your project needs. No Docker daemon required.
• Secrets stay on your machine. Outbound traffic is allow-listed and your ssh-agent is forwarded, so git push works without keys entering the VM.
• A sandbox per project or ticket. Run several at once; multi-repo tickets get a git worktree per repo with coordinated PRs. Idle VMs automatically release memory and suspend to disk, so a forgotten sandbox costs (almost) nothing.

Why a VM?

clawk is a general-purpose local environment for autonomous coding agents. The VM is the point: it's a whole machine the agent can own, not a process wrapped in policy on the one you're using.

• A separate kernel. The guest runs its own Linux kernel, so the host filesystem isn't hidden behind deny rules; it was never mounted.
• A conventional Linux environment. Standard kernel, standard userland, /dev/kvm-shaped expectations, so tools behave the way their docs say, without a syscall-filter surprise.
• Root in the guest. Install system packages, edit /etc, load a module, bind a privileged port. It's the agent's box to reconfigure.
• A disposable lifecycle. Cheap to break and quick to recreate; a wrecked VM is one clawk destroy && clawk away, with your repo and conversations untouched on the host.
• Stronger separation from the host. Isolation rests on the hypervisor boundary rather than on getting a process-sandbox policy exactly right.

That combination runs workloads a restricted process sandbox tends to fight you on:

• installing packages and native dependencies;
• running background services (databases, queues, dev servers);
• executing untrusted builds and tests at full speed;
• using system-level Linux tooling that expects a real machine;
• and, with a KVM-enabled guest kernel on supported hardware, container and Kubernetes dev workflows such as Docker or Kind running inside the sandbox. This is opt-in and hardware-gated; see Images for the exact requirements.

None of this is the product; clawk is for local agent work in general. Docker and Kubernetes are just the sharpest example of "needs a real machine, not a sandboxed process."

Install

Requires macOS 14+ on Apple silicon. (Linux is supported via firecracker and currently experimental; see VM providers for the gaps. This README is macOS-first.)

brew install clawkwork/tap/clawk

From source (contributors, or if you don't use Homebrew), needs Go 1.26+:

git clone https://github.com/clawkwork/clawk && cd clawk
make install

Either way there's no extra host tooling: no Docker, no qemu, no sudo. The hypervisor is Apple's Virtualization.framework, linked into the binary. First run probes for anything missing and offers to fix it.

Uninstall: clawk destroy your sandboxes, rm -rf ~/.clawk, then remove the binary with brew uninstall clawk (or delete it from $GOBIN for a source install). Nothing else was installed: there are no launchd jobs; the per-sandbox daemons are ordinary processes that exit with their VMs.

Quickstart

The everyday case, a sandbox for the directory you're in:

cd ~/code/my-project
clawk                      # boot a sandbox for this dir + attach claude
clawk run shell            # drop into a shell in the same sandbox
clawk run codex            # or another agent: codex, opencode, shell
clawk down                 # stop the VM (repo + agent state persist)
clawk attach               # come back later — boots if stopped, reattaches claude
clawk destroy              # remove the VM (conversation history is kept)

Common options:

clawk run claude -- --resume            # pass args through to the agent
clawk forward add my-project 3000       # expose a guest dev server on localhost:3000
clawk network allow my-project api.example.com

Working on a ticket that spans several repositories? One command creates a sandbox with a git worktree per repo on a fresh branch, and clawk pr later opens cross-linked PRs for whatever changed:

cd ~/code/my-workspace     # contains a clawk.mod listing the repos
clawk work INFRA-123       # one sandbox, a worktree per repo, claude attached
clawk pr INFRA-123         # push branches + open one PR per repo

The full ticket lifecycle (status, follow-up branches after merges, rebases) is in docs/ticket-mode.md.

Tip: using Claude Code? Run claude setup-token then clawk auth set-token once, and every sandbox comes up already signed in, with no /login and no login conflicts between parallel sandboxes. See docs/claude-auth.md.

What survives what

One rule governs persistence: the VM is disposable; everything you'd miss lives on the host.

* Two exceptions: resuming a clawk snapshot restores the disk and memory exactly as suspended, and the Linux/firecracker provider keeps its disk until destroy. Tools every boot needs belong in the image (vm ( image … )); per-boot setup belongs in on up hooks.

Agent state is host-mounted per sandbox: the guest's ~/.claude/projects/ and ~/.claude/memory/ (and codex's ~/.codex/) live under ~/.clawk/namespaces/default/state/<name>/ on the host, so a recreated sandbox picks up its old conversations with --resume.

Full autonomy by default (and the --safe opt-out)

Runners launch in their "externally sandboxed" modes: claude gets --dangerously-skip-permissions, codex gets --dangerously-bypass-approvals-and-sandbox. On your own machine those flags would be reckless; here they are the point: the VM boundary and the network allow-list provide the containment, so the agent works at full speed without per-action prompts. The agent can only affect what you mounted and allow-listed, nothing more (see SECURITY.md).

Prefer the confirmation prompts anyway? Add --safe to any attach (clawk --safe, clawk run claude --safe) and the runner starts without its bypass flags for that session.

Networking

Outbound traffic is denied by default; each sandbox has its own allow-list. DNS resolves everything; TCP, UDP (including QUIC), and ICMP echo to unlisted hosts are refused. Common registries (npm, PyPI, crates.io, GitHub, Anthropic, …) are pre-allowed, and the filter is DNS-aware, so allowing example.com keeps working as its IPs rotate.

clawk network allow my-project api.stripe.com '*.internal.mycorp.com' 10.0.0.5
clawk network denials my-project     # what the agent tried that got blocked
clawk forward add my-project 3000    # localhost:3000 → the guest's dev server

Denials are recorded by the hostname the guest resolved, so clawk network denials reads as a log of what the agent tried to reach. Reusable named policies (including subscribing to external blocklists like oisd) and the use chain that layers them are in docs/networking.md.

Configuration: clawk.mod

No config file is required; defaults are sensible. When a project needs more, a clawk.mod file describes it, in a go.mod-style syntax:

sandbox my-project (
    vm (
        cpu    4
        memory 8GiB
        image  golang:1.25          # any OCI image is the rootfs
    )
    network ( allow api.example.com )
    forwards ( 3000 )
    env ( DATABASE_URL )            # names only; values come from your shell
    on create ( "go mod download" )
    agent (
        instructions "Ask before running destructive commands."
    )
)

The block is a template: snapshotted when the sandbox is created, so a running sandbox never changes unexpectedly. The full reference (shares, secret files, skills, agent memory seeding, multi-repo workspace roots) is in docs/configuration.md; images and custom guest kernels (including the KVM-enabled kernel used for nested virtualization) are in docs/images.md.

Lifecycle

clawk list                  # all sandboxes
clawk status [<name>]       # state, forwards, blocked hosts; --json for scripts
clawk up / down             # boot / stop
clawk pause / resume        # suspend / resume the running VM in memory
clawk snapshot              # save to disk: RAM freed, guest intact; resume restores it
clawk destroy               # remove the VM; host-side state persists

clawk snapshot is hibernation for sandboxes: the guest's memory is saved beside its disk and the next boot restores the guest exactly where it was. Background processes and dev servers continue as if nothing happened, and clawk attach puts you back in front of the agent. The full command surface, runner dispatch, and the idle-management machinery (ballooning, admission control, auto-stop) are in docs/commands.md.

How it works

you ──▶ clawk CLI ──▶ per-sandbox daemon (detached; owns the VM)
                        ├─ gvproxy: in-process userspace TCP/IP stack —
                        │  the DNS-aware outbound filter the guest can't reconfigure
                        ├─ vsock bridge to the in-guest pty-agent (no sshd)
                        ├─ ssh-agent proxy, macOS (signing stays on the host)
                        └─ VM: Virtualization.framework (macOS) / firecracker (Linux)
                             ├─ clawk-init, PID 1 (no systemd, no cloud-init)
                             ├─ your repo, live-mounted over virtio-fs
                             └─ claude / codex / shell on a PTY

A few deliberate choices, in brief:

• The rootfs is an ordinary OCI image. clawk pulls it (no Docker daemon), flattens the layers, and writes an ext4 disk directly, with no root and no loop devices. Every sandbox from the same image is a copy-on-write clone (APFS clonefile / FICLONE), so per-sandbox disk cost is what the guest writes.
• The network is filtered below the guest. The VM's entire L3 (gateway, DHCP, DNS, NAT) is a userspace stack inside the daemon process. Every outbound connection and DNS answer consults the allow-list there, where even root inside the guest cannot change it. No host iptables, no sudo.
• One way in. No sshd, no cloud-init: a single vsock agent is the only control path into the guest, and each attach is container-exec-style: a fresh process, torn down on disconnect.

The full picture (the guest stack, both providers, the frame-level networking) is in ARCHITECTURE.md, and the reasoning behind each decision in DESIGN.md.

Compared to

• Containers & devcontainers. They share your kernel and see your filesystem minus deny rules; a single kernel bug or a mistaken mount can expose the host. Devcontainer setups often bind-mount the host Docker socket to build images, handing the container control of the host daemon; clawk keeps Docker inside the VM instead. And there's no Dockerfile/devcontainer.json to write: any OCI image is the rootfs.
• OS-level agent sandboxes. Tools like Anthropic's sandbox-runtime apply process-level guardrails on your real machine: great for lightweight rules, but one policy mistake exposes everything (keychain included), and installs, background services, or a nested hypervisor are awkward to allow safely. clawk moves the whole workload onto a different machine.
• General-purpose VM managers (e.g. Lima). Lima gives you a Linux VM; clawk is a workflow on top of one: a VM per project with the repo mounted, an agent attached and authenticated, egress allow-listed by default and denials logged, agent conversations persisted across destroys, and a ticket mode that manages worktrees and PRs. (Under the hood both use Virtualization.framework.)
• Cloud sandboxes. Local-first: your code never leaves the machine, nothing is billed by the hour, and the worktree the agent edits is the one in your editor, live-mounted on macOS (the Linux provider currently bakes it in at create; see Roadmap). Cloud sandboxes fit fleets; clawk is for the machine on your desk.

Security model (and its limits)

Two boundaries do the work: the VM (the host filesystem is invisible except what you mount) and the outbound allow-list (enforced in userspace below the guest, for every protocol that can leave it). What clawk does not protect against:

• Whatever you mount or allow is exposed. Worktrees are writable, so an agent can commit bad code or push to any repo your forwarded ssh-agent can reach. Review what comes out of a sandbox like you'd review a stranger's PR.
• Secrets you push in are visible. files ( … ) and shares ( … ) contents, forwarded env vars, and the Claude token are the agent's to read (and, if a destination is allow-listed, to send there). Share the minimum.
• Hypervisor escapes. clawk relies on Virtualization.framework/KVM isolation; it does not add defenses beyond them.

If you find a way to break a boundary (guest-to-host escape, network-filter bypass, credential leakage), please report it privately via SECURITY.md.

FAQ

What's the overhead? The first boot from an image pays a one-time rootfs build (pull → flatten → ext4). After that, disks are copy-on-write clones and the kernel direct-boots, with no firmware and no installer. Idle VMs release memory down to ~1 GiB, stop automatically after 30 idle minutes, and can be snapshotted to disk so they cost only storage.

Does it work on Intel Macs? Windows? No. macOS needs Apple silicon (macOS 14+). On Linux, the firecracker provider works but is experimental (see docs/commands.md). No Windows support.

Do I need Docker installed? No. clawk pulls OCI images and builds bootable disks itself. Docker images are the input format; the Docker engine is not involved. (Running a Docker daemon inside a sandbox is a separate, opt-in feature; see Images for the hardware and kernel requirements.)

Why "clawk"? The mark is a claw; clawkwork is a play on A Clockwork Orange. A VM you wind up, set loose, and can always reset.

Roadmap

Next up: running more sandboxes than your RAM can hold at once.

• Idle stops that snapshot. Manual suspend-to-disk shipped as clawk snapshot / clawk resume; next, the automatic idle stop uses it too, so dev servers survive the stop and a suspended sandbox costs only disk.
• A cap on running VMs. Instead of refusing a new VM when RAM is committed, suspend the least-recently-used sandbox to disk and start the new one.
• Firecracker parity. Live worktree propagation and host-file push on Linux.

Status

Pre-1.0 and under active development, and evolving quickly: expect breaking changes between releases. The CLI surface changes least and internals most, but nothing is frozen until 1.0.

Contributing

Issues and PRs are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md to build and test, ARCHITECTURE.md for how it's built, and DESIGN.md for where it's headed.

License

Apache License 2.0. clawk vendors two third-party components under their own licenses (gvisor-tap-vsock, Apache-2.0; an hcsshim ext4 writer, MIT); see NOTICE.