What leaves your Mac #
The app has no telemetry, no analytics, and no update check. Every outbound connection the host makes:
| Destination | Why |
|---|---|
cache.nixos.org | Packages a copy asks for, through the pull-through cache on your Mac. |
github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs | The nixpkgs source archive, fetched once into the shared store. |
| Whatever your agent talks to | The chat runs your own Claude Code; its traffic to Anthropic is yours and goes the way it always does. An external MCP client's traffic is likewise its own. |
Nothing else. Your files are mounted into copies, not uploaded anywhere. There is no cloud component in the alpha.
How copies are networked #
- Each copy has its own user-space NAT (gvproxy) on a private
192.168.127.0/24. No macOS Internet Sharing, no vmnet, no network extension, no reboot. - A copy can reach the internet through that NAT, so
git cloneandcurlwork inside it. - Copies cannot see each other by default.
- Mesh mode adds a shared network on request: an embedded control plane on your Mac and a WireGuard client in each copy, so a server in one copy is reachable from another by IP. It is additive; isolation from your Mac's LAN and internet access stay as they were. It exists only while the app runs.
- Ports a copy listens on are reported live (
instance_ports), and the app forwards a port to127.0.0.1on request so you can open it in a Mac browser.
Limits #
The alpha is honest about what it is. In rough order of how soon you will meet them:
- Memory is held while a copy runs. Each open copy keeps its 4 GiB. There is no way to reclaim an idle copy's memory yet. Open what you need.
- No snapshots yet. Freezing a copy at a checkpoint and starting N copies from it is next; today every copy boots from the base image.
- File watchers do not see host edits. Run dev servers in a copy with polling. Details in Your first copy.
- Clipboard is one way, Mac → copy.
- Metadata-heavy builds are slower over virtio-fs than on a local disk.
- GPU rendering goes through a chain the project maintains itself (Mesa/Zink → Venus → virglrenderer → KosmicKrisp → Metal). It runs Blender, Chromium and Firefox; it is also the newest part of the stack and the one most likely to show an edge.
- Audio works, through a bespoke path from PipeWire in the copy to CoreAudio on the Mac, one stream per copy.
- Apple silicon only. Intel Macs, Windows and Linux hosts are not part of the alpha.
- The agent harness is new. Expect it to need steering on long goals; that is what steering is for.
Force-quit #
Quit the app normally. It stops every copy and its network process in order. A force-quit can leave those behind; the next launch reaps them, and in rare cases a reboot is needed.