Launch HN: machine0 (YC S26) – Persistent CPU and GPU VMs from the CLI(machine0.io)
39 pointsby bwm4 hours ago11 comments
  • prodtorok3 hours ago
    Basic question:

    What are you doing here that my agent couldn't do with: AWS, GCP, Hetzner, DigitialOcean?

    Quick read is this is some simple api abstraction? or you're even brokering that compute? Which i would want, why?

    • bwm3 hours ago
      You can totally ask an agent to orchestrate an existing cloud. But their APIs weren't designed for agentic orchestration, so it'll be more expensive in terms of context / turns (machine0 grammar is simple: new, ls, rm...).

      The other thing is if you're running large workloads that span many machines (e.g. software factories, model training or RL environments), then over time you'll end up with orphaned artifacts that will need to be maintained (think security groups, volumes, elastic IPs etc).

      Ultimately, most of our customers today just want to be able to spin up a powerful & reliable VM without worrying about DevOps or any other kind of maintenance :)

      • 37 minutes ago
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      • xrisk3 hours ago
        This seems like something that could exist as free software and can be easily vibecoded in the form of a pile of scripts. Thanks for the idea!
        • dmmalam2 hours ago
          Could say the same about v1 of OpenRouter which Stripe is acquiring for $7B this week;) [1].

          [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323381

          • handfuloflight13 minutes ago
            You can't vibecode your way to their market capture.
          • gajus2 hours ago
            OpenRouter is valuable because it has a large catalogue of competing providers for a fungible service. This does the opposite (lock in with a specific vendor).
        • auaan hour ago
          Dropbox-esque?
        • 3 hours ago
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  • atechboy2 hours ago
    > People run a pilot agent that scopes work and delegates it to sub-agents, each on its own VM: shape a project with the pilot, and the workers implement it and open PRs. One customer runs hundreds of machines at once, spun up and torn down from the CLI.

    Are people spawning VMs for every tool call? If so, would love to understand why so, and why containers are not a good fit?

    • bwm2 hours ago
      Hi! No not for every tool call. People are spinning up VMs for tasks that require sustained compute for hours or days. For example, they’ll deploy an agent with tools and a prompt to take an entire feature from spec to PR. Or an auto-research loop to improve the performance of an inference model.
  • bobbylarson2 hours ago
    The Profiles idea is the interesting part. Injection at creation is the easy half; the hard half is revocation mid-session. If a credential in a profile rotates or gets pulled while a box is up for days, does the running VM keep the old value until restart? For long horizon agents that window is where the risk actually lives.
    • bwm2 hours ago
      Hi! OAuth token refresh is handled within the profile, and will automatically get picked up by agents using it. If you actually want to pull or rotate a credential, you can do that too and re-inject.

      The pattern that's increasingly common is having a pilot or orchestrator agent sitting on top of the fleet that manages this.

  • ncan hour ago
    I’m currently using Modal for my GPU training workload, how does this differ?
  • averylostnomad4 hours ago
    When you say suspendible, do you mean that I could make a VM, configure it by installing packages and libraries, then pause it?

    And resume it later with the full disk ready to go? No billing during the inbetween time?

    That’d be huge, but seems wild. How can you economically keep the storage between active sessions?

    • bwm3 hours ago
      Hi! Yes that's right. Sorry if it wasn't clear, but you do pay for storage. Cost is nominal compared to compute ($0.078/GB/month).

      The other option is to define your entire environment as code using nix (we have native NixOS support). For example, you can use an agent to author code which declares everything on your machine: packages, libraries, shell, vim config... And then you can take that code and use it to rebuild a new VM on machine0 whenever you like (or somewhere else).

      Docs here: https://docs.machine0.io/examples/nixos

  • kwakubiney3 hours ago
    What does this give me that fly.io sprites does not give me?
    • bwm2 hours ago
      Hi! You get GPUs, much bigger machines and full control of the VM down to the drivers, kernel etc. It's also a lot cheaper, especially for compute intensive workloads. Also, if you're running agents in the VMs, you get native support for credential and MCP tool injection via profiles. We support NixOS too!
      • gajus2 hours ago
        Can you give me a practical example of 3 most deserving use cases? Something that customers are actually using them for today.
        • bwm2 hours ago
          Hi! Sure: (1) running agent fleets for software factories, (2) Model training and RL environments orchestrated by agents and (3) as a backend for agentic products and platforms.
  • dmmalam3 hours ago
    What's the roadmap? Any plans for swarm specific tooling, or an backend marketplace (eg aws, hetzner etc).
    • bwm2 hours ago
      Yes, we're building more tooling around fleets, starting with profiles that let you manage named sets of credentials and MCP tools outside of the VM. We're also looking to support more backends and also BYOC.
  • benswerd4 hours ago
    What is the hardest part of building this for you?
    • bwm4 hours ago
      I have a payments background. So maintaining a very high bar on security, reliability and performance as usage scales is super important.
  • rvz4 hours ago
    Does this internally use AWS or is this your own self-hosted environment?
    • bwm4 hours ago
      Hi! It sits on top of DigitalOcean. We also have BYOC on the roadmap.

      This gives you the best of both worlds: agent native, CLI-first DX with the reliability and performance of a traditional cloud.

      • benswerd4 hours ago
        What made you choose digital ocean?
        • redrove3 hours ago
          YC gives DO credits for startups.
        • bwm4 hours ago
          Their machines are good & they have a partnership program that's fast and compatible with the model.
  • sparkling2 hours ago
    >machine0 provides on-demand cloud virtual machines accessible via a command-line interface and web dashboard. VMs run on DigitalOcean infrastructure.

    Well, given DigitalOceans already inflated prices, this certainly won't be cheap.

    • bwm2 hours ago
      Hi! We're not the cheapest compute on the market. But we are cheaper than most sandbox providers / neoclouds. And customers are happy to pay for agent first DX coupled with the performance and reliability you expect from an established cloud.
    • gajus2 hours ago
      The funny thing is that DO itself has an MCP for spinning up VMs, resolving IPs, etc.
  • gogasca3 hours ago
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